You build a life. Where ever you are – that’s where you are and you create something that looks and sounds like a life. At least to the best of your abilities. You move to a new place and eventually, you know people, recognize faces. They know you. You can maybe joke with them, test them out, see who gets your sense of humor. Figure out which cashiers or librarians to avoid. You prefer this postal worker over that one. Eventually, you notice when there’s been a change of staff. It happens gradually.
I’ve lived in the country now for nearly nine years. I know people. I have places I prefer to go over others. I have favorite routes home. Sometimes I take a different one because I need the adventure and I’m familiar enough with the curving, meandering roads now that I don’t worry that I might become hopelessly lost. I know more than one way to go.
At the Domino’s store, while picking up pizzas on Friday (they don’t deliver to us; we miss their cut-off point by about .2 miles), I ran into the father of Dusty’s BFF and Red’s BFF. He smiled. “You cheating too?” he asked as he carted off two pizzas and a box of bread sticks (the kind with cheese or with cinnamon sugar?). Cheating? No. Dusty had a friend spend the night and Friday, being the end of the week, means the cupboard is bare. Pizza’s the best thing for a Friday night and Red even got to have a slice with pepperoni on it.
I often see one of the other GS troop leaders at Food Monger. She’s a cashier. Nice. Quiet. We all have to work for a living. I don’t know how she does both. You get to know people a little deeper over time even when you don’t expect to. It happens. Maybe they decide they don’t like you. Or vice versa and that’s okay. You can’t be everyone’s friend. But they’re part of the scenery of this place you live.
I took a writing/yoga class yesterday in a yoga studio on top of a business, in my old childhood neighborhood. Across the street there’s a new donut shop opening up. There were people – lots of people I don’t know – strolling the streets, shopping, eating al fresco in the restaurant next to the donut shop. The room we were in was large with a long line of floor-to-ceiling windows. High ceilings. With stamped tin tiles painted over many times.
I imagined myself turning the studio into an apartment. For me. This big sunny room, overlooking a busy street down which cars never stop moving, would be the living/dining/kitchen room. A small kitchen could be put in that far corner with the shrine niche filled with shelves for my food and pots and pans. Or only my nice glasses and dishware. If I lived here, I’d have beautiful glasses and dishes.
The outer rooms would be a darker interior den area with comfortable sofas. The other smaller studio would be my bedroom. The massage room a guest bedroom for when my children came to visit me in my city home. Back in the place where I started.
Saturday afternoon, with the pre-teens and the husband off to see Dark Shadows, I sat on the deck momentarily and read another chapter from The Artist’s Way. Red was practicing riding her stingray bike, the one that has no training wheels, the one that did not get crushed under my husband’s car last week because it was not put away.
One of the tasks was to list touchstones, things that I love, that make me happy. Here’s what I wrote:
Touchstones: quiet nature [somebody had been target shooting all morning], hearing my children sing, laugh, live in teh worlds of their minds, gardens, growing things, a walk alone, solitude, writing – getting in the zone, watching Red ride her bike and sing and talk to herself completely unselfconsciously, Pokey, the pigs, a blue summer sky edged with tree tops, planting something new and watching it grow, watching my kids master a new skill, roses, moss roses, zinnias, basil, tomatoes, finding just the right thing, solving a problem, the ocean, the beach, the sound of waves, the smell of bread baking, a cake baking, icing a cake, seeing a movie, discovering something new, learning a new skill, being able to donate money, giving my children hugs and kisses….
And then Red dumped her bike on the ground and came up the steps. She’d scraped her thigh and damaged another finger in her quest to ride this bike (and she’s been at it non-stop over the past few days). We got out the box of bandaids. They have phrases on them, describing various scenarios explaining the need for one: jousting, dance off, ninja fight, shark bite.
“Which one do you want?” I asked.
“What does ‘dance off’ mean?”
“A dancing contest, like a marathon.”
“Shark bite.”
She applied the bandaid and headed back down the stairs, mounted her bike, and continued practicing. Here’s a video Dusty kindly took last night, after Red took a bath (and neglected to brush her hair), that shows just how much her determination has paid off:
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We belong here.
Life in Scribbletown 