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Have you seen these ads on Facebook that try to get you to buy custom t-shirts? Ones that say "I crochet so I don't strangle people" or "I'm a programmer; trust me", because some sort of computer algorithm (look at me, using words I don't fully understand) has taken your personal information in order to sell you something. One that pops up on my feed frequently says "I'm a Texas girl living in an Ohio world", and every time I see it I think about when I used to be someone who would have bought that shirt and worn it as often as sweat and body odor would allow. I remember being a scrawny tomboy who loved the Dallas Cowboys and pecan pie, who helped her mother make tortillas in a special pan and wore the burns like a badge of honor. I remember ducking into a large sewer drain with my sister to get out of a sudden hail storm, riding bikes for hours, neighbors named Bubba and Nacho and Fay. And I remember the mutiny that rose up in me when my mother announced that we were moving, that she missed her family and we were going home. Except that Texas was my home, and Rocky and Cathy and Jayne and Freddie were my family and I had finally reached the age where I had real friends that would call on the phone, even though it bored me to talk about clothes for more than a minute
But I really couldn't do anything to stop the move, other than watch the boxes pile up in my room and glare at my mother whenever she talked about how great our lives would be in the North. This is how little my opinion factored in: the day that was chosen to pack up our house and leave was my last day of fifth grade. The day when teachers threw out the lesson plans and brought in sno-cone machines, when recess lasted for hours instead of 30 minutes, when children were emboldened to tell each other their true feelings. I was sitting beside my mother, the Dallas skyline whizzing past us as we headed to Oklahoma, then Missouri. And I still remember the conversation that we had that morning, the promise I made to make new friends in our new home, to get along. My sister apparently made no such concession, because she kept the clock in her room on Central time for more than a year after we settled in the Ohio suburbs (and I wish for the life of me that I knew what happened to finally make her change it, but I'm drawing a blank). I kept my promise that summer, as we walked our new town to get our bearings, since there were sidewalks everywhere and quiet streets and everything fit in six square miles. And I kept my promise as I walked to school each morning, after my dad had left for work and my mother took my sister to the middle school on her way to the hospital. I listened to the kids around me talking, and I felt like an anthropologist studying an aboriginal tribe. They used different words, like clique for the way people clumped together at recess and queer (which I thought meant when a boy liked another boy) for when something was strange. And when I finally did speak, they asked me why I didn't have an accent, and I just shrugged, because the accent I heard most in Texas was the lilting way Hispanic women spoke, and the "Texas" accent heard on tv was more common further south. But I couldn't keep my promise at our new church, when my parents brought me to the Wednesday night program, when I was expected to walk down the hallway by myself to a room full of people I didn't know, never mind that they were my own age. That was when I cried and begged them not to leave me, but they did anyway, so that I had to walk down the hallway into a room full of strangers with a splotchy face and red eyes. (This is one of those moments I think about now, and I still don't know if they did the right thing. Do you push your shy, awkward baby out of the nest or let her stay home with her nose in a book?) Then one day, on my walk to school, I saw something I'd never seen before. It was like little ice on each blade of grass. Later, I learned it is called "frost". When I got to school, I asked if it had snowed, and I got funny looks. (Much like labor pains, once you've experienced snow, you don't mistake a tiny pattern of cold for the real thing again.) Actually, I seemed to get funny looks most of the times I spoke. The boys called me by my last name and the girls had apparently decided who their friends were in kindergarten, and I bounced around trying to find my place. A year is a long time to go without a friend. But suddenly sixth grade was ending and I had found Melissa. Of course, I didn't know then what she would mean to me over the years; pretty much all I knew was the distance from Texas to Ohio, and that people stopped saying Coke and started saying Pop somewhere in between.
That was the turning point for me, finding one person who liked me just the way I was. The next year, I joined the school band and made more friends. I had a boyfriend or two, which was more a cause for anxiety than excitement. I found an identity I could live with, at least for a few years. I was the nerdy girl who got good grades and used her quick sarcasm to make her friends laugh. "My So-Called Life" aired for a year, and I watched each episode, entranced by Claire Danes and her struggle to be a good daughter, a fun friend, a desirable girlfriend. Like many adolescents, I struggled to have control. It seemed that everything that went wrong could be solved by a change of location. The kids at my school are snobs. The winters are too cold. The budding trees make me sick every spring. My 18th birthday stood out like a bright yellow Finish line. Once I got there, everything would be different. When the college brochures started arriving in the mail my junior year, I tossed every one that was located in Ohio. I perused the ones from Wisconsin and New York, but they went in the trash once I found out how snowy their winters were. What remained were schools in Florida, Washington DC, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, and of course, my beloved Texas. I had the grades and test scores to go where I wanted, and that was anywhere but here. But I didn't have the money to pay for any of them. I still remember the desperation as my senior year drew to a close, trying to come up with a plan, some kind of loan that would get me out of Ohio and on to the life I was supposed to be living. Finally, in June, after graduation, I admitted defeat and took the short trip up the highway to Kent with my dad, filled out an application and took a tour and went home with an acceptance letter. It was affordable and offered the degree I wanted, but it was not the grand experience I thought college would be. So I graduated early and took a job as a flight attendant. I stepped off the plane in a new city every day, and I invited the world to audition for me. DANCE. SING. Give me a reason to never leave. I explored New York City and Kalamazoo, Michigan. I strolled through Jacksonville, Florida and Greensburg, South Carolina. I ate barbecue in Charleston and lobster in Maine. I flew to California and Canada and Cincinnati. And I felt like Goldilocks, because none of them felt quite right.
There was one trip I was saving, a destination I had very high expectations for, the one I was certain would fit like no other city on earth....
I'll be posting the conclusion of my journey on Saturday. In the meantime, purchase Emily T. Wierenga's new book, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look on amazon NOW!! ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards Emily’s non-profit, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree (www.thelulutree.com) is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.
so glad to be on this journey with you
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