December 28, 2011 – Everyone in Texas Drives a Truck
I’m not the coolest sister. My oldest sister Jesse with her
degree in physics and her current Zennish state must not seem so marketably cool
either. Apparently my youngest sister Michaela holds the spot. This does not
come as a complete surprise to me. After all, she does live on a boat. Things
don’t get much cooler than that.
Michaela
My sibs and I all seem to have some version of the Bohemian
gene passed down to us from our Techno-Hippy parents. We prefer not to adhere
to conventional rules or lifestyles and the manifestation of this comes in
different ways for each of us six kids. Whether for genetic or income reasons,
my brother Noah recently got his Commercial Driver’s License and went out for
five weeks of training which put him away from the family for all the holidays;
Christmas, his birthday and New Year’s. When his fiancée Kim calls to say he
and his trainer are dropping off a load in Garland and to ask if she can get a
ride to go see him, my mom volunteers both my dad’s car and me for the job.
Fine by me. I’m only in town for a short time. Although I’ve
seen Noah twice already if I don’t jump at this chance God only knows when we
shall see each other again (As Hodel said to Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and as my great-great-grandmother used to wail each week while wringing her hands when
her family left after Sunday dinner).
At the right time I load myself into my dad’s dragon-fire
red Mini Cooper and feel awfully cool as I zip across town, shifting gears like
a pro and turning up the music’s volume from the steering wheel buttons.
Kim
Kim waits for me outside her apartment. She’s dressed up
pretty, and is so excited she almost can’t stand it.
“Noah said you have to wait in the car,” she tells me
knowing the relationship I have with my brother.
“I can wait in the car,” I say. She’s joking, I’m serious. “I
brought a book.”
“You are not waiting in the car.”
“I will if you want.”
When we get to the T&A Truck Stop we’re a little early.
I drive through the maze of trucks yelling out the window for Noah. In the Mini
I feel like a grasshopper among giants. I drive extremely carefully. “Noah!
Noah, Noah, Noah!” I yell.
“I don’t think they’re here yet,” Kim tells me after
checking her phone for texts.
I park and we wait.
“Noah! NoooooAAAAH!”
Still no brother.
“Maybe we can get you a truck driver husband,” Kim says,
apropos of nothing.
I scan the parking lot. The truck drivers are mostly large
fellows, their bellies hanging down over their belts and their mustaches
hanging long down over their cheeks.
“Hmm. Is Noah gonna grow a big ol’ mustache now that he’s a
truck driver?” I ask.
“I don’t think so.”
We wait a little bit longer. Then from across the parking
lot we see someone who looks like Noah. Sure enough, it is him. The greetings
are both joyful and siblingly. I lock up the Mini as the drizzle turns into rain.
Inside the truck stop we get food, drinks or nothing and sit around chatting.
“We’re going to shop for a husband here for Amanda,” Kim
says.
“You don’t want a truck driver husband,” Noah tells me.
“I don’t?”
“No.”
“Because they’re fat and dirty and grouchy?” I ask.
“Not grouchy,” Noah corrects me. “Just coocoo.”
“Oh.”
Noah takes a sip of a Red Bull, Kim eats her cheeseburger and
I take pictures.
“I’ve driven thirty-two hundred and fifty miles,” Noah says.
He’s been on the road two weeks and only been driving half the time. He’s been
to California, Connecticut, New York, New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas, and lots of
places in between. “We’re going to switch trailers here with another driver. My
trainer will call when it’s time to leave.”
Since we don’t know exactly how much time we have to kill, we
go outside.
Noah lights up a cigarette. Kim takes her spot close to him.
I stand up on the bench so I can be underneath the umbrella. It’s raining even
harder.
Noah takes a drag, puts his arm around Kim and adjusts his
stance. “My trainer is fascinated by Michaela’s living situation. He keeps saying
stuff like, ‘Wait, what? Aren’t there bugs?’”
I laugh. “It’s not so much the bugs as it is the snakes and
raccoons.”
“And the spiders. My trainer told me I could go home if I
wanted to while we waited today and he’d call me to come back but I told him ‘No,
my sister will be there.’ And he said, ‘The boat sister?’
I stand on one foot and balance.
“’No, the Peru sister,’ I told him,” Noah continues. “And he
said, ‘Can I talk to her about the boat sister?’”
Tank
I lean back on both heels and try not to fall off the bench.
“I could talk about her.” After all, she’s told me plenty of stories. About
Tank, her German Shepherd, who loves to howl along to harmonica music, of the
roiling nests of snakes she encountered, of tugging a stuck boat back to the
docks when the lake police wouldn’t, of the strange algae growth that collected
in the corner of the slip and looked like alien eggs, of the raccoon that
chased her up a fence, of walking the entire marina to go shower in the club
pool’s locker rooms, of the weekend and party community of boat people, of the tunneling
wind that howls down the docks, of her favorite sound of the clanging lines of
the sailboats, and of all the things that have leapt out of her hands and
jumped into the lake; cell phones, a bottle of wine, keys, food. Michaela’s
life would make a much better reality show than mine. There’s a lot of drama on
the docks, and every day of her life holds a story that sounds unbelievable but
I know is completely true.
Next to all that I’ve got nothing. So yeah, I guess she is
the coolest sister.
After a week and a half of working and socializing I am
exhausted. I go hunt my mom down to get a hug from her.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I tell her with my cheek against her
shoulder. “But I could use a good cry.”
We pour some red wine into our glasses and go sit in the living
room in preparation for the TV show watching end of the day ritual. She and I
chat while we wait for my dad to get his food and ale and come join us.
“What’s going on?” My dad asks, pausing in the doorway on
his way to the kitchen.
“Nothing,” Mom says. “We’re just talking about good cries.
Amanda needs one.”
“Do you want me to slap you?” Dad offers.
“That might work,” I say. I imagine a hand-print welt
embedded on my cheek and all the subsequent explanations. The scenario plays
out something like this:
“What happened to your face?”
“Oh, this old thing?” I touch the mark on my face. “My dad
slapped me.”
“WHAT? Why?” my friend-stranger-family member asks as they
pulls out their cell phone to dial child protective services.
“I needed a good cry. Ain’t my dad the best?”
Mom turns the TV on. There are about five different remote
controls and she presses buttons until everything is on and at the right sound
level. Being a dinosaur-age technology child, I’m uber impressed. Somehow I
didn’t get the cool High Technology Gene in my personal DNA makeup even though both
my parents have it. This seems unfair. I still write on actual pieces of paper,
listen to records made in the 1970s, and read books with bindings. HD? DVR?
TIVO? That’d be all Greek to me--only I can actually read Greek (however, I
will say that understanding it is a whole different story). Forgetaboutit.
“Sometimes anger works better than anything for releasing
emotion,” Dad says.
“That or a good workout,” I say. I don’t do anger much.
“You could do that AB workout we’ve been meaning to do all
week and your mom and I could watch.”
I give him that “Dad, don’t be absurd” look.
My mom points, clicks, selects and scrolls. “We should watch
that last A Gifted Man episode we
have saved,” she tells my dad. “It’s sad. That’d be good for a cry.”
So we do. At first I’m not emotionally attached to these
characters. They’re rich and snooty and behaving unrealistically. Yeah, yeah,
it’s a television show, I know. But then at the end as the character who’s
dying of rabies is being rushed to the hospital for a last-chance experimental
procedure and the hippy-priest guy marries her and her rock-climbing boyfriend,
and then the doctor frantically tries to revive her and can’t and the music
swells and dies and then when the newlywed husband kisses the temple of his
dead wife and says, “Goodbye my beautiful wife,” my throat tightens up and
those tears I couldn’t summon on my own finally spill out.
I don’t even bother wiping them secretly from my cheeks
because I hear my dad sniff his own tears away. I smile through the mist; my
dad and I are two peas in a pod. Two negatively charged subatomic particles
occupying the same orbital field. I’m a chip off the old block, cut from the
same hunk of wood, an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree. In other words,
he and I are a lot alike. Often times I envision myself as a little girl with
curlicue ringlets (as I used to be) treading behind him, fitting my feet in the
patterns of his footsteps, walking in his shadow. I love this.
If my mom is crying she’s doing so with ninja-stealth tears.
We all want to be just like her.
After we watch the ambulance scene one more time for good
measure and cry just a little bit more, Mom heads off to bed. She has to be up
early to go to work. Me and my dad don’t. I’m unrepentantly unemployed (more or
less) and he doesn’t have to be to work until around nine o’clock. We can
afford to stay up. Dad pulls up a music video of Goyte’s Somebody that I Used to Know so we can watch it again on the giant
flat screen. He’d shown it to me the other day on my mom’s computer. It’s a
hauntingly beautiful melody and an incredibly artsy video. We’re both a little
obsessed with the song. I’d heard him playing it on repeat the night before from
his study while I read in my room. I’d been playing it on repeat all this morning
myself.
We watch it at least once. Then we go from there on a
musical journey. Somewhere along the way we arrive to the Blues; Johnny Winter,
Stevie Vai, Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, Stevie Ray Vaughn.
It’s floodin’ down in
Texas. All the telephone lines are down.
“I saw Led Zeppelin in concert,” Dad says at one point.
“You did?!” I exclaim. “I’m going to have to tell that to my
ten year old student Joaquin. He’ll be so jealous.” My status as the coolest
tutor in the world will go up to infinite levels after I convey this to
Joaquin. Led Zeppelin is his favorite group. I’ll take that cool status even if
it’s not really earned on my own merits. I have no shame.
“I saw them at the Lewisville Pop Festival in 1969.”
He also saw Janis Joplin, Leon Russell, Ten Years After, BB
King, Iron Butterfly, The Rolling Stones, Poco, Joe Cocker, The Doobie
Brothers, Spirit, The Allman Brothers, Traffic, Steve Miller, Lynyrd Skynyrd and
Jimi Hendrix twice. It’s kind of sad to realize your parents are way cooler
than you are. But I’ve lived with this knowledge for a long time and, in
reality, it makes me more proud than anything else.
While Dad is trying to find our next selection, we see a
video called Noah Takes a Photo of
Himself Every Day for Six Years.
“Hey, go back one. Can we watch that?” I ask. My second to
youngest brother’s name is Noah and I’m suddenly both nostalgic for the days
when he lived with me and intrigued by what would drive someone to start a six
year photo project.
Six Year Photo Noah
We watch the entire thing. We’re impressed and awed. I have
so many questions. Why did Noah do that? Why six years? Was it a school
project? Of six years? Did his
friends and family tease him for being such a narcissist? Why did he choose not
to smile in the pictures? Did he ever miss a day of photo taking in all that
time? Six years is a long time. I get hung up on that. While my mind is trying
to create a believable story to answer that WHY, Dad keeps us singing on.
We watch Leon Russell sing A Song for You which logically takes us to Elton John and Russell’s
version of If it Wasn’t for Bad I’d be
Good. Then we listen to what is possibly Elton John’s best song of all
time: A Little Word in Spanish. I’m not
sure if it’s me or my dad who says, “This song makes me cry every time.”
I get Leon Russell mixed up with Joe Cocker when I think of With a Little Help From My Friends and Masquerade.
“That’s Joe Cocker,” Dad says.
“Oh yeah,” I say. I really did know that. “I think I like
The Carpenter’s version of Masquerade
best.” Musically I got (contentedly) stuck in the 1960s and 1970s. I’m a flower
child at heart.
“I’m not gay,” Dad says, “But I do like the Carpenters.”
“Let’s find Masquerade,”
I say.
He starts to type Carpenters into the search engine to find it
and we’re watching the results as they appear with each letter he puts in. He’s
gotten to CARP when we both burst out laughing. The first video option says Love With a Fairy Carp.
“I’m sorry,” Dad says between guffaws, “But I’ve just got to
see what this is.”
I do too. Although I’m a little frightened of what we might
see. I hold my breath and Dad presses play. It’s a Chinese Yueju Opera and we
watch just enough to satisfy our curiosity. I let out my breath. We look at each
other and snicker.
“You have to fight the fairy carps to get to the
masquerade,” Dad explains.
So we fight them quickly and get our Carpenters fix and
eventually Turn, Turn, Turn along
with The Byrds.
There’s a fine line between Rock ‘n Roll and Country and we
cross it long enough to listen to Montgomery Gentry’s Hell Yeah and Tim McGraw’s Indian
Outlaw. “The thing about Country,” Dad says, “is they don’t get embarrassed
by anything. They do whatever they want.” So we listen to Carrie Underwood sing
Before He Cheats just to prove that
point. This song for some reason reminds me of James Taylor and Carole King and
I once again mix up my artists. “Didn’t Carole King write that one song about
James Taylor? You’re so Vain?”
“No. That was…” Dad thinks.
Then I recall from watching How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days who sings it and we say “Carly Simon”
at the same time. The clip we view has a really strange video of a guy who
looks like a Hasidic Jew. He dances around parks and down stairs like he’s
pretty darn happy, and really and truly doesn’t care that Carly thinks he’s
vain. I’m pretty sure this guy does think
that this song is about him.
“Oh god,” Dad says. “I think we found who she wrote this
song for.”
“Who?” I ask, pulled from my musing. Does he mean the music
video dude?
“She wrote it for the Indian Outlaw.” The Indian Outlaw video we’d seen several
songs ago had kept us both in stitches, and of course the lyrics sing for
themselves on the humor scale. I’d heard this song for the first time decades
ago when I got to sit up in the moving van cab with my dad while we were
driving from Vermont back to Texas. The musical ties between us become like a
three-cord strand which can’t be broken; at least not easily. When the song
first came out some people got their hair all tied up in knots “due to its stereotypical
portrayal of Native Americans (Wikipedia)” and Indian Outlaw was actually banned from some radio stations. My dad
and I don’t worry about controversy or political correctness--this is a no
holds barred musical night. Besides, as Larry the Cable Guy says, “I don’t care
who you are, that’s funny right there.”
How the heck we end up watching Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow after all
that beats me. But we do.
“Oh,” I say. “If you’ve never seen this little girl sing
that same song then you’ve got to type in Connie Talbot.”
Connie had been on Britain’s Got Talent and I’d lost my
heart to her when I used to watch You Tube Videos all day to entertain myself
at work. Her rendition of this song stirs me even now and I get more of the
soul-cleansing cry that I’d been needing this night. I start to believe again that
all the dreams I dare to dream really do come true.
Moved by that emotion, I tell my dad to search for another
name I’d seen off Britain’s Got Talent. I hold my breath once more (though for
an entirely different reason from earlier) while Paul Potts sings Nessun Dorma as if he were offering his
voice up to Apollo as a musical libation. I’m glad my dad and I can wipe our
tears away shamelessly in front of each other. It’s the combination of the song
itself and Potts’ performance that makes me feel that the world is good and
that love is real and that we all can live our lives to their fullest.
A little drunk off that idea I say, “Okay, we’ve got to
watch one more from Britain’s Got Talent. Just wait. She’s terrific. I love
her.” I search for a word to sum her up. But I can’t find one. I find two. “She’s
cheeky.”
Our last song of the evening is Susan Boyle singing I Dreamed a Dream. This dowdy woman who
paradoxically believes in herself and dares to sing about unfulfilled dreams makes
me laugh and cry. Her performance is stunning, surprising, and unexpected. Her
words reverberate through the auditorium, through the TV screen, into my psyche:
I had a dream my life would be So different from this hell I'm living, So different now from what it seemed... Now life has killed the dream I dreamed...
Although the lyrics aren’t as hopefully inspiring as Over the Rainbow, through Susan Boyle
they infer the opposite of what they say. What I take away is this: Life ain’t
hell. Life is different from what I expected it would be. But better. Not
always beautiful, not always clean, but breathtaking and astounding. Life can’t
kill the dream I dreamed because dreams are already ghosts waiting to be wisped
away or made solid, breathed into, brought to real-boy Pinocchio kind of life. Music
salves, and there’s always a dawn after the darkest night, even if it comes at
two AM on a December morning in the living room of the house at 1222 Carroll Drive.
I know from experience that a good cry or solid night’s sleep can usually
cure my emotional build-ups, but a hug from my mom and time with my daddy seem
to work just as well too.
December 18, 2011 – It’s Not Just Peruvian Men After All
Every year my friend Kirk and I go to a show, a sporting
event or a concert when I come to visit the Dallas area for the holidays. This
year we go to see the Dallas Theater production of A Christmas Carol.
But first we go to dinner.
“Don’t worry, I know the vegetarian drill by now…and most of
the world has caught on to you vege-peeps,” Kirk messages me a few days before
along with our evening’s schedule.
He takes me to Palms Restaurant which has been around since
1926. “With 28 locations, including one in London and one in Mexico City, Palm
is still owned by the same families that started the original Palm in New York
City. They treat each guest as if they are part of the family. It’s Old World
hospitality at its finest.” (http://parklabreanewsbeverlypress.com/news/2011/11/palm-restaurant/)
The valet recognizes Kirk and calls him, “Friend,” and “Buddy,”
and “Amigo."
Jose and Kirk
Our waiter, Jose, has apparently been working for Palms since they
opened in 1926… well, for the last 27 years at any rate. He’s old and friendly and
had moved from New York to help start the Houston and the Dallas Palm
Restaurant branches way back in the day. Then he decided to stay in Dallas. He
thought it’d be a good place to raise his sons and doesn’t appear to think he
ever went wrong with that decision. He seems to truly like his job. I want to
ask him if he really does. I’ve been so caught up in anti-corporationism that I’ve
lost sight of what company loyalty looks like. Watching Jose, seeing the 27 Years lettering embroidered on his
right shirtsleeve, I feel like I’ve stepped back into another era. One where
companies treat their employees right and where the employees ride for the brand--to
use some Cowboy lingo that I learned from reading Louis L’Amour.
The entire wait staff handles us like royalty. It really is
Old World hospitality at its finest. This is what it must feel like to be rich,
I think. Why don’t we treat each other this way all the time?
I give out smiles to all the people who pass us by; men and
women alike. I don’t feel like I have to guard them here the way I do in Peru. But
I try not to make my smiles too flirty, just friendly. I get returned smiles, some
“How are you tonight?”, and attention to our table from some of the guys who
aren’t working our station. Kirk comes here on a semi-regular basis and some of
the staff knows him by name, the others by face. Throughout the course of the
night they all stop by our table to say hi.
“We’re about to go see A Christmas Carol,” Kirk tells one of
the managers.
“Oh, that’s a great one,” he says, “’You’ll shoot your eye
out!’ The Red Ryder BB gun.” He laughs.
I laugh too. “That’s A Christmas Story,” I say, feeling some
odd need to correct him. “I thought the same thing at first. This is the one
with the ghosts and Scrooge.”
“That’s a good one too,” he says. He stays at the edge of
our table to chat a moment longer then he pats Kirk on the arm and gets back to
work.
Jose glides by, sees that we’re finally ready and takes our
orders down. I go for the Arugula and Apple salad, a dish of mushrooms and some
Brussels sprouts. Kirk gets a steak and checks to make sure I don’t mind
sharing some of my veggies. I don’t.
“I can share,” I say. My mom taught me about sharing.
Not much later our food arrives.
It looks delicious. I stick my fork into my salad and
discover the bacon. The menu had not advertised bacon and I curse myself for
being naïve and not asking to make sure it was truly a vegetarian salad.
Foolish girl. Instead of sending it back, I just pick the bacon out and set it
on the side of the plate. This probably means I fail some vegetarian test, but
I do it anyway.
Jose walks by to check on us. He sees me picking and leans
over the table to see specifically what I’m doing. “What is that?” he asks.
“Bacon,” I say.
“There’s bacon on it?” Kirk asks.
“You want it?”
“Sure. There’s no need for good bacon to go to waste.”
His worries set aside that our meal isn’t ruined by vegetarianism
Jose backs off from hovering over me and smiles again.
I decide not to ask what the mushrooms were cooked in or pay
attention to the parmesan crumbled over the Brussels sprouts. I sip the house
Merlot and feel terribly grown up.
Kirk and I eat our meal and talk about the faces painted on
Palms Restaurant walls. People who spend some crazy amount of money eating
there and who are members of the Restaurant get their faces put on the wall. We’re
seated next to a strange combination of faces including Dean Martin, G.W. Bush,
Catherine Carr, Ronald Reagan and Ol’ Blue Eyes. Their stares do nothing to
ruin our appetites and we put the food away purposefully.
After Jose has cleared away our empty dishes, he presses
dessert menus into our hands and waits for us to decide. But we reject dessert and
when the bill is paid and we’re sincerely goodbyed by everyone and wished happy
holidays and cheerfully put back into the car by the brotherly valet we head
over to Turtle Creek to see a play.
It looks like a full house. We’re up in the balcony and have
a nice view of the stage. A couple is in the seats next to us and I assume they’re
married.
We cozy in to the chairs and wait for the show to start.
The lights go out and Jacob Marley’s mournful cries fill the
auditorium.
My neighbor fidgets and I feel his leg against mine. This is
America where we’re space sensitive and personal bubble paranoid. So I surreptitiously
move my leg away. And then again. And again. The seats are close and the leg
room negligible so I don’t necessarily take this as a bodily contact come on. Beside,
I’m not feeling especially alluring, even though I know beauty is in the eye of
the beholder and some beholders have really non-discriminating eyes.
The Ghost of Christmas Past scares Ebenezer into regret and
the lights turn on for the Intermission. Kirk gets up to go walk around and
check out the concession stand and I decide to sit it out.
My neighbor turns toward me. He’s got a ring on his ring
finger, but his blonde and beautifully made-up companion does not. She’s much
prettier than I am and better dressed. She checks her phone and waves him off
to talk to me. I wonder if they’re just friend out for an outing like Kirk and
I. Is he just wearing any old ring or is it a wedding ring? I want the details.
I always want the details.
“It’s a good production,” he tells me.
“The special effects are great,” I agree. The appearance of
Jacob Marley early in the play was made eerie, ghostly and frightening by light
strobing and smoke. I was scared. I mean, I would
have been scared if I were a kid or something.
“I come every couple years to see this one,” he says. “Are
you from Dallas?”
“Garland,” I say.
“Me too,” he exclaims. “What part of Garland?”
“South Garland.”
“You know Wynn Joyce and Broadway?”
These are streets and I do know them. “Yeah sure.”
“That’s where I live. Where abouts are you?”
“I grew up off of Glenbrook and Centerville,” I say. “But I
currently live in Peru.”
He asks me what I do. And I tell him I’m a writer which then
leads into how I managed to get to Peru and what made me choose that place of
all places. He’s impressed by the fact that I moved out of the country.
“It takes a lot to do that,” he says. “Most people get too
scared to make a change.”
“It’s hard to leave what you know. What’s familiar,” I
agree.
“How old are you?” he asks.
Oh lord. Even here. This must just be a normal question. And
all this time I’d ragged on the Peruvian males for asking me this. This man isn’t
so different. He’s hitting those same age-old questions by direct questioning
and a little observation:
“Where are you from?”
“What is your name?”
“Are you alone?”
“How old are you?”
It’s the same pattern. I’ve been here before.
“Thirty-three,” I say.
He doesn’t tell me I look younger than that and I suddenly
feel old. I wonder if he just skipped the “Are you alone?” question because he
saw my ringless fingers and/or saw me come in with Kirk.
“You have Facebook?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“We should exchange information. It’s always good to have
more friends--especially interesting ones.”
I hand over a slip of paper and have him write his information
down. After all we’ve sat leg to leg for
a full first half of a play. “I put my email,” he says. “Can you read it?”
I can.
Kirk returns, my new buddy Tim turns back to his date, and
shortly thereafter the Ghosts of Christmas Present and of Christmases Yet to
Come scare us all into thoughtfulness, we cheer with Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew over
Ebenezer’s change of heart and move our lips to say, “God Bless us, everyone!”
in time with Tiny Tim.
As I put my jacket on and swing my bag back over my
shoulder, I want to ask neighbor Tim if he’s married, if the blonde lady is
just his friend, and what exactly he expects by giving out his email. Is this
just normal human to human interaction or is this a North American come on that
feels remarkably similar to a South American one?
I can’t answer my own question. And if I ask him, then that’ll
be taken (possibly) as a return of interest (if he’s asking his questions for reasons
of interest in me) and I don’t really want to go there.
So instead, I breathe out a very small apology to all the
Latino men I’ve judged so harshly. Because, boys, it ain’t just y’all after all.
December 12, 2011 – Because I am a 4th Generation
Texan
It doesn’t help my tendency to talk Texan that my sisters
and I go visit my aunt and uncle in the country. One of my Colorado friends
always said, “You say ‘y’all’ a lot more after you visit your family.” I’ve
only been here a week and already the Y’all is replacing You Guys, You All, and
Ustedes. My vowels are also rounding out and elongating. Heck, before I leave
the States I’ll be talkin’ like a real live, bless your heart, southern gal, y’all.
I call up my younger sister. “What day do you have off work?
You wanna go out to the country with me to visit David and Kathy?”
My aunt and uncle live out in East Texas on the farm my
grandparents bought some time in the 1970s. I spent a good portion of my
childhood dusting my socks, jeans and the top of my shoes with sulfur to avoid chigger
bites, high-walking in the grass to scare off rattlers, casting minnowed lines
into the tank to fish, and walking the foot trails with my Mammaw looking at
animal tracks. I haven’t been out to the farm in years. And certainly not since
David and Kathy moved there at the beginning of this year. It’s high time I go
for a visit.
“Saturday is my only day off,” Michaela says. “We could go
then.”
I text my aunt to ask if she’d mind us coming out on
Saturday.
Plan to stay for dinner, she texts me back.
Later on, when my older sister is over I throw out an
invitation to her as well, forgetting that Michaela’s car doesn’t have backseat
room since it serves as her closet. After all she does live on a boat.
“Oops,” I say to my mom after Jesse leaves. “Now what do I
do?”
“You can take my car,” Mom says. “Maybe Kim will want to go
too.” Kim is my sis-by-engagement-to-my-brother.
“You don’t mind?” I ask.
Kim and David
My mom never minds. And thus it’s arranged. We’re country
bound!
Saturday arrives and Jesse and I go pick up Michaela and
then Kim. I drive. Jesse DJs the jams and knits. Michaela provides the personalized
GPS service and Kim updates us on our second to youngest brother’s commercial truck
driving interstate progress.
Jesse and Me
It’s a perfect day for a drive. The fifty some odd miles go
by quickly. Soon I’m turning down 2602 and taking a right onto the gravel lane.
“You shouldn’t speed down this road in Mom’s car,” Michaela
chastises me after I swerve to avoid a pothole.
I’m only going twenty miles per hour, but I slow down a
little more. Then I turn left through
the gates, past the sign that says Epps--our maternal side surname-- down the path
past the tank (a tank is a man-dug water reservoir similar to a pond or lake)
through the copse and then pull into the carport next to the house.
Uncle David greets us with Paco in hand. Paco may be just a Chihuahua
about the size of a zucchini, but he’s got delusions of grandeur that I can
totally relate to. He lets us know in no uncertain terms that this is his
property and he’s pretty much in charge.
Kathy, David, Paco
After the hellos are made we all go up to the tank to check
out the new dock that David and his brother-in-law put in. Paco leads the way
then doubles back to bark at our heels.
Uncle David tosses some fish food into the water. Jesse and
I watch the perch come up to nibble their dinner while Michaela and Kim try out
the fishing poles with no catching success. We discuss water levels, rain accumulation,
fish size, wood staining, post strength , deer sightings, hog sightings, and turtles.
After a while Aunt Kathy heads back to the house to start some appetizers.
When the air starts to gather a chill in its arms we follow
after Kathy and head indoors.
“I know you said you’ve been craving spring rolls,” Aunt
Kathy tells me while cutting up carrots and other crudités.“so I’m making some lettuce wraps.”
They’re delicious and craving-satisfying. We make short work
of them.
“When do you girls want dinner?” Aunt Kathy asks.
The four of us exchange glances and convey that we’re all up
to the challenge of making short work of dinner too whenever it’s ready. Then we
all try to help and stay out of the way at the same time. Uncle David pulls the
trash bag out of the can and starts for the door. Kim takes my camera and
follows him out while he goes to burn the trash.
When they come back inside Kim says, “You should go get some
pictures of the cows.”
The recent rains have made the crossing of the creek both possible
and enticing to some of the neighbor cows. David and Kathy and Paco have been
occupied with chasing them off the property for the past couple of weeks, but
the cattle are still coming over. They’d come in and eaten the bales of hay
Uncle David had set up to use for target practice, made clomping tracks up to
the tank, “planted” cow patties across the pasture and created gaping holes in
the mud with their heavy hooves.
Michaela has Paco in her arms while we try to get in picture
taking distance of the cows. Once the pictures are captured he’ll be released
to chase the cows and demonstrate his super speed. He can hardly handle
waiting.
Michaela and Paco
I only get one picture before the cows trot off into the
brush out of our sight. They’ve been chased off so many times now they know the
drill. Paco barks, “And stay out!” then darts all around looking just like a
land-bound version of Mighty Mouse.
Since we’re there, we tour the old west town a guy named
Tony had built in the ‘70s or 80s’. He’d been a journalist for the Dallas
Morning News and came out to the country on the weekends. As kids, that place
had seemed so huge and so fantastic. Tony had named one building The Sheriff’s
Office. Another The Opry House. The Outhouse had been down the path a ways. When
we were kids we’d always wanted to play there, but Mammaw kept us in check. We
could go over to visit and peer through the windows but that was about it.
“It seems so small,” I tell Jesse.
“I know,” she says.
We look for the Outhouse but don’t find it.
“Uncle Vic tore it down,” David tells us when we find him.
My Great Uncle Vic and Great Aunt Glenna had bought the property from Tony at
some point and had lived there until my Uncle Vic passed away and Aunt Glenna
went to live nearer to her kids.
“Tony used to work for the Dallas Morning News and he did a
piece in Austin for Austin City Limits or some show like that where Waylon
Jennings played and Tony got to take the Opry House sign with him which he put
on one of the buildings.”
Maybe David said it was Willie Nelson not Waylon Jennings. I
can’t remember. The place has some Country and Western history at any event.
Meanwhile back at the house, Kathy’s done stuffing the
tomatoes and prepping the potatoes. While the grill is heating up I try my hand again at making
Pisco Sours. When we’re all served they say, “Welcome home,” we clink glasses
and drink.
“Is this a dry Pisco Sour?” David asks.
“It’s right in the middle,” I reply. “Not overly sweet but
not completely dry.” They’re not half bad. At least no one spits them out or
goes to wash their mouths out with soap and water.
While the potatoes bake, we tour the house, watch a Hallmark
special, play with Paco, don Christmas scarves and then dinner is served. Sure,
we’re eating potatoes and tomatoes, but these are no ordinary tubers. These are
gourmeted up. Fancified and delicious!
When my plate is clean Kathy asks if I’d like more.
“I’m so full,” I tell her. “That was really good.”
“You won’t go home hungry?” she asks.
“Not a chance.”
Especially not after she serves us gluten-free brownies. Kim
and I split a second brownie just to be polite. At least that’s how I justify
myself to my full belly. We sit around
the table visiting for a bit longer then ease up from the table. After we say
our thanks yous and get some Y’all come back nows, we head ‘em up and move ‘em
out.
Uncle David rides up to the front with us to close the gate.
We wave goodbye and drive away.
Michaela GPSes us back to the Dallas area. I drop her off at
the marina, Kim at her apartment and take Jesse home. I drive myself to my
parents’ house, get greeted at the front door by the dogs and then steer myself
off to bed.
I can’t help myself from comparing. Maybe it’s human nature.
Maybe it’s a personal flaw. Maybe it’s just my curious mind always trying to
make sense of what I see. As if that weren’t bad enough I find myself
contrasting everything too. Putting experiences side by side. Holding them up by
the tips of my fingers to see how they catch the sunlight. Gazing at them
through my mind’s eye like at those Spot
the Differences pictures in the comic section of the newspaper. This might
just be me stringing connections together where before there weren’t any in
order to tell a story. Whatever it is, it’s what I do.
When my mom drives me home from the airport all I want to
say is, “In Peru this…” or “In Peru that…” or “In Lima there’s…” I’ve come back
with a new prescription to my world view glasses and it’s all I can focus on. If
I keep my mouth shut maybe I’ll avoid sounding obnoxious.
Sunday morning traffic is pretty light. I’m shocked (not
into silence though) by the calm, the order. There’s a Dallas area adage that I’ve
used plenty of times in my life that says, “Six Thirty-Five is always bad.” And
it is. Until now. 635 is one of the main highways in the complex and veiny
highway system of Dallas Fort Worth. On this ride 635 is practically empty. The
cars that happen to be zipping by or getting left behind us all stay in their
own proper lanes. No one honks. No one leans out the window and yells, “Avance!”
No one pulls out in front of us and then stops dead to haggle rates with someone
standing on the side of the road. Clots of taxis don’t trawl the roads looking
for fares. In fact, I don’t see a single taxi or bus.
“We’ll take the Dallas Tollway,” my mom says, “because 635
gets backed up a little around Preston Road.”
Light and orderly traffic
I sit back and enjoy the ride. After a trip down three laned
Javier Prado with a mess of traffic that crowds in six or more cars and feels
like a dare against death backed up
seems relative. Just having a personal vehicle seems like a luxury.
It’s fall in North Texas. The trees, whose numbers seem
greater than I remember, have turned delightful colors of orange and yellow and
red. “Look at all the trees!” I exclaim. “I didn’t know Dallas was beautiful.”
I didn’t. The blend of road and tree, cement and green, skyscraper and sky
makes a contrast of color I’d never fully noticed.
I’ve not been totally oblivious; I used to be shocked by all
the trees and flagrant greenery when I came from mountainous and arid Colorado
to visit my folks. Despite its more temperate growing environment, Dallas had
always come up short for me in comparison to Colorado. Now I wonder how
Colorado would stop me with its beauty. I wonder how the city of 400,000 would
seem flat-lined after Lima. I may not get the chance this trip to see, but part
of my heart beats faintly from an altitude of 6035 feet.
Some bit of me belongs in Colorado, but when I talk about
going to Texas I always say, “When I go home.” Because home is where unconditional
love ripens and never spoils. Home is the place where I can leave my composting
worms with my dad because he gave them to me in the first place and I know he’ll
take care of them while I’m gone and maybe forever. Home is where memory smells
like honeysuckle vine and looks like Black-Eyed Susans. Home is a place I can
leave behind and come back changed, and yet people will still know me by name.
If heaven were a garden; it’d be my mom’s backyard.
If paradise were a house; it’d be found at 1222 Carroll
Drive.
If happiness were living beings; they’d be my parents’
dog-friends Oscar and Rocky.
If friends were parents; they’d be mine.
Oscar
Friday morning I go to get the insurance card for the white
van from my grandmother. She and my grandfather are letting me borrow it for
the weekend. I’ve too quickly given up on my idea of taking public transportation
or walking everywhere while I’m here. Convenience presents a persuasive
argument.
“Do you have a minute to come inside?” she asks.
I do. I have about five minutes before I need to head out
across town to meet a friend for lunch.
We sit in the front room.
“You’ve changed,” she tells me after she settles down and
turns to face me.
“I have? How do you mean?”
“I noticed it after you came over the other day.” She pauses,
and I wait with a weave of curiosity and mild fear about the size of a Taco
Bell Hot Sauce packet. I’m not quite sure how to take this. I can’t tell if she
means this in a good or bad way. I feel like so much depends on her answer in
the way that William Carlos Williams said:
so much depends
upon
a
red wheel
barrow
glazed
with rain
water
beside
the white
chickens.
I
stay politely in my chair waiting.
“You seem more cosmopolitan.”
I breathe again even though I don’t exactly know what that
means.
“I think it’s a good thing,” she says without me having to
ask. “You’re a woman of the world.”
She’s comparing me to who she saw me as last. She’s
contrasting my behavior to what defined me before. I can understand this. Ain’t
that what I’ve been doing myself?
Never in my life did I ever
think the words, “Dallas is a quiet city,” would come out of my mouth. I’d have
bet against those odds. “Right,” I’d have said, drawing out the word with total
disbelief. “Dallas. Quiet. Ha.” But recently I’ve learned never to think in
absolutes. Especially when I hear the kinds
of words coming out of my own mouth.
Dallas is a quiet city. After Lima my sense of noise has
forever altered. Here, the omnipresent cacophony of horns does not plague the
air. Car alarms aren’t a constant melody. Screaming kids and yipping puppies
are at least not within hearing distance for hours on end. Strange sounds like
duck calls or misplayed kazoos do not reverberate up and down the street as
some vendor announces his presence selling bread, ice cream, sweets, or
sharpening knives. This is not to say that the City of Dallas is not without
sound--no--but it is at least, from what I’ve heard in the last four days,
less noise polluted.
This astounds me. I stand in the middle of the sidewalk
listening to one airplane passing overhead. Then I only hear the rustle of
drying leaves against the concrete. The soft whir of a passing car says
something sibilant. A distant dog barks then stops. I go back inside and sit on
the couch looking out at my mother’s garden. The refrigerator hums comfortingly
and Rocky sleeps against my knees making soft snorting, sighing sounds.
Something warm settles around my ears absorbing the chill I got
from standing in the outside air. Silence. The silence I’ve been craving for so
long is here in the place I left behind me so long ago.
I would never have believed this of Dallas.
I’d fled to the mountains of Colorado and sworn off cities.
Forever I thought. Then, in a fit of craziness, I moved into a city of nine
million people. Lima. Someplace where I never thought I could survive. A city
jungle I wasn’t sure I could handle. Fighting it, resisting it, trying to find
my place within it somehow I have survived and I have handled it. Me—one among
millions.
The Dallas metroplex contains only six million people. That
three extra million that Lima has makes a heck of a difference that’s for sure.
With the warding off and protective measures I’d learned in
the last six months’ of my Lima living I decide to walk to the library. It’s
four and a half miles from my parents’ house. I don’t have a real reason to go
except that I’ve missed books and want to see how it is walking in this city.
DART, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, is a relatively new thing,
and the trains don’t go everywhere. As I head down Carroll Drive towards
Glenbrook, there aren’t seven million taxis passing me, slowing down, yelling
out the window, “Taxi. Taxi?” to me as I walk head down and fast. Here I don’t
have to walk fast at all. I take a leisurely stroll and only two cars go by me
in that half a mile stretch.
Here I meander. I gaze up at the blue sky. I stop to turn my
face into the sun. I watch a yellow leaf fall to the ground and then I sidestep
it so I don’t crunch it underfoot.
I walk for an hour without getting honked at once. I don’t
get yelled to or whistled at. I only pass one other walker and she meets me eye
to eye, smiles. Smiles! and says, “Hi.”
“How’s it going?” I say as I pass her and keep on.
The streets are empty of humanity. The people of this city
are behind their wheels, inside their insulated houses, at their jobs – they’re
not out walking the streets to get somewhere. Places are too far apart for
that.
Settling way too quickly into this City’s mentality I get
about halfway to the library and realize I don’t really need to go there. So I
walk up Sycamore Street to gaze at the house my parents’ bought after they got
married. The house where they brought me right after I was born. The tiny house
I lived in until I was about seven years old. My older sister and I swung on
swings in that backyard looking up at the stars and dreaming of Care Bears. We
made notes with Crepe Myrtle blossoms in the front yard. We tricked people into
smelling the pollen filled centers of Buttercups and then laughed with delight
at their yellow tipped noses.
I smile at the memories. Then I walk the back way to Blossom
Road where I lived from age seven until I was ten. I walk past my childhood
best friend’s house, up the hill, to the house with the tall Pine tree that I
climbed at least once to satisfy a dare. There’s someone on the front porch
talking on the phone. So I duck out of sight to take a picture without being
seen. The roofers on the house next door don’t whistle down at me or blow my
cover.
Just when I tuck my camera back into my bag and start
walking again, a white truck pulls up to the curb. I pause to check both ways
before I cross the street. The driver catches my eye as he climbs down out of
the cab and says, “Hi.”
“How’s it going?” I reply and go on.
It’s not a come on. It’s not a, “What beautiful eyes you
have,” hit. It’s just a hi.
I’m not used to that. I scrunch my forehead and ponder
ulterior motives. Then I laugh. I look up at the glorious cloudless blue sky. I
watch an American Flag flip against the wind. Here I can walk with my head up.
I can meet people’s gaze without recrimination.
I can let down my defenses. This is the place I’m from.
“Hmm. Is Noah gonna grow a big ol’ mustache now that he’s a
truck driver?” I ask.
