run away

Even the heat loving Bermuda grass has gone brown and crispy now. What sounds like rain outside my window is the drought stressed river birch dropping its leaves. The temperature's 108.1 °F according to the constant bringer of bad news, Weather Underground, and it's like this day after day after day.

Some of my earliest memories are of wanting to be somewhere else. There have been years in this life when that wish to be elsewhere was spurred by an internal distress. That's long since resolved and still this feeling is with me with some regularity, a lot of late.

I can't capture the essence of it in words. Maybe you've felt it too, this itchy restlessness, a sense of things missed, of other worlds. Lying on my back under a full moon at the top of a mountain in New Mexico, looking at that endless sky, the urge to go, to see, to experience everything in this world is so strong as to be near irresistible. The voice inside whispers run away, run away, just go. I've felt it, too, in the thick of the bird-filled mangroves on the Black River in Jamaica, at the top of a downtown high rise looking out at the city lights. It struck me with wrenching intensity standing alone on the edge of the Grand Canyon watching the sun rise and sparkle on the snow. In my younger years, the urge was always for the city, but these days it's for a big emptiness, for mountains, for the endless horizon of ocean, the rush of a wild river.

Recently, along with the run away urge, comes an awareness of time passing much, much too fast. That, coupled with these dreadful hot days of summer, feeds the sense of urgency. Escape. Where to? I fall asleep reading the GAP Adventures catalog that comes in the mail a few times a year. Where to? Nepal? Overland through Zambia? Mountain trekking in Morocco?

I don't know where I want to go. Actually, that's not entirely true. I want to go everywhere, I just can't settle on a single place. I want to see everything, experience everything, get out and away and on the road. I want away from the sameness and the drudgery of working day after day after day. Time's wasting and this is no way to spend what remains. Had last year's plans worked out as intended, I'd be writing this from the terrace of our Mexico house. The different-ness of that place would be a welcome change, but surely after a while, even there, it would again be time to go.

Do you want to go? Where to? Tell, please.

flatland

It's New Year's Day and we're at Aunt Ethel's house again. We don't come here often. Every other year on first day of January, we visit my mother's only living sister in Wellington, Kansas. Aunt Ethel's a short, plump, blonde and she wears the same high heels and cinched-waist dresses my mom's known for. She's married to Les, a train man, who's tall and kind, with twinkly eyes.

Aunt Ethel's house is 1950s modern. Blonde brick, gray and pink interior. Her sofa's streamlined and sleek, upholstered in that awful stiff nubby weave that leaves red loop marks on the backs of my legs. Armless chairs, blonde tables, and jazzy gray lamps with flaring shades complete the space age picture. It looks like the Jetsons could live here.

I hate it. Even at eight, I'm into old stuff. My father's house is packed with antique furniture, old clocks. My mother buys and restores old furniture, sells it. With my family, we've hunted antiques all across Oklahoma and Kansas. My mother's persistence in visiting one Kansas farm four times a year, five years running, resulted in the arts and crafts oak pedestal table she longed for finally coming to live with us.

It's New Year's day and the monotonous sound of the television droning on and on drives me outside. I don't want to watch the Rose Bowl parade. I can't bear the sound of football games on TV, even at this age. Cindy, the streamlined, sleek, black and white terrier, joins me in escaping. As often happens in this part of the country, January 1 is sunny and not too cold.

I sit in the sun on the front steps, feeling the warmth on my shoulders, looking across the road at nothing. We're on the edge of Wellington here, in my aunt's house. Everything is flat and winter-crisped dry. Brown. Ugly. The air smells dusty but the heat feels wonderful on my head.

Closing my eyes, I get the sense that this feeling I'm having will be with me forever. The sense of wanting to escape, of wanting to get away from the way things are, I think I've had it the entire eight years of my life. I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be somewhere else, away. Just away.

I long to live anywhere but here. I want to free myself from the dry sameness of this landscape, the flat, unending prairie rolling off to the west. I am sure there are other ways to live, better ways. I've been to New York, to Chicago, to other big cities.

I think about how it feels on the trains we take to Wichita, to Dodge City, to Chicago, as if something's going to happen, something thrilling, electrifying. I remember how I feel standing in the space between the cars, looking out at the night as we arrive in the bigger cities. It feels as if there's a life out there and I'm missing it. I am misplaced. Lost. I know I should be someplace else. Anywhere else.

Aunt Ethel opens the door and tells me it's time to eat. She hugs me close as I edge by her, her sweet, flowery perfume at odds with the modern house I step back into. On the table is a feast. Turkey and dressing, potatoes and gravy, cranberry relish, jello salad. My family's standing around, waiting for me to come in so everyone can say grace together. The game drones on across the room. We bow our heads and pray.

happy right now

I stay angry about the health care disaster in the US. Tuesday I'm admitting Daddy to an assisted living center. My stepdaughter won't speak to me, and insists I fired her, when she actually quit of her own accord. My middle sister had a wreck with someone uninsured, of course. My nephew's recovery from back surgery isn't going all that well.

So what's to be happy about right this minute? I'm trying, and the fact of being able to escape the US in the next 6-8 months fills me with joy. To remember my future home, I watch this a lot.



Things are steadily leaving the house. I remember when I obsessed over finding one of these:


The hunt for a plump, red, Riviera tea pot consumed me for years, long before the internet improved the odds of finding one. Mine's going to Ohio, along with a pair of the Riviera handled tumblers that fueled my relapse into Riviera obsession twenty years ago. I'd collected Riviera in the mid-'70s, then sold the bits I had. Once I found the pair of tumblers for a dollar each, I was hooked again. Now I can't even remember why I cared. At all.

It's hard to believe such a passion could simply vanish, but if I could wave a wand and have all of the stuff I've devoted half a lifetime to collecting suddenly disappear (leaving behind a cash equivalent, of course), I'd be thrilled.

I just heard from our attorney in Merida and he okayed doing some minor construction now. "Take possession," he said. "It will be better to do a little bit now. The house is yours." Sounds good to me.

I took possession of that little beach cottage in my heart and soul the instant I walked in the door. Tonight I'll go to sleep thinking of the day I'll wake up to the sound of waves right outside my window. I can't wait. It keeps me happy right now.

'bye

Merida, Yucatan, the White City. Whale sharks. Pink flamingos. Can't wait.

runaway

When Bessie finally got Water Moccasin's truck fixed, the two of them took off to see how it would run. Water Moccasin always bragged on his wife. She could fix anything and did, because Water Moccasin himself was a drunk and if he wasn't on the job, hanging drywall, he was passed out in his recliner.

I loved to hear Water Moccasin stories, how he bragged on his wife, how strong she was, how competent and capable. She was a legend among the working men on the construction crews, a tiny little dark tanned woman, tough as nails, as hard working as anyone I've ever known. Bessie. I called her Mrs. Water Moccasin which never failed to make her cackle. Her grin was a little snaggle toothed, and she had laughing eyes. It was impossible not to feel happy in her presence.

I always wanted to be just like her, like Bessie, with her competence in the manly arts. I pride myself on my physical strength and my way with the power tools, but Bessie could out work most men, and she didn't mind dirty, a thing which has always stood between me and my urge to do physical labor.

When they took off that day, the truck was running rough. Over time, it smoothed out and as they traveled, it got better and better. It was finally running so well that Water Moccasin and his Bessie kept on driving until they hit the west side of Alaska. That's a long way from Oklahoma, a lot of driving for a drunk old man and his tough, merry little wife.

Water Moccasin died a few years after that. Bessie never came back to Oklahoma. That's how I feel a lot of days, like I could just get in the truck and drive. I could load up my little husband and hit the road. Never look back. Just let go of this life and responsibility and obligation. Goodbye to all of that. You? Ever want to run away, cut those ties? Did you do it?

getting out

and not a moment to soon. mexico. beaches. sun. sleep. be well, everyone.

m.i.a.

Missing in action. I used to have one of those bracelets, wore it into the late '70s. Don't know what ever happened to my Vietnam serviceman. My commitment to wear the silver until he was located fell victim to an excess of vodka and nights spent wilding in the bars.

I have a sense of being adrift, without focus, missing in action from my blog and my life. Must be time for a getaway, but the best deal I can find is in Jamaica and I am not sure I can stomach a retreat to such a homophobic country. I've been looking at international properties ~ something more permanent ~ thinking I can run away from the fascists in Washington, find a little nook high in the mountains, celebrate life in a country which minds its own business and flies under the radar.

I am as disgusted with this Cheney thing as I've been with any of the Bush era travesties beyond the lies told to get us into Iraq. I don't know how this could happen to my United States, this country I've pledged allegiance to since I was four years old, and I find myself just wanting out.

Do you ever dream of running away? If so, where do you imagine yourself ending up? My dreams take me to a country with beaches and mountains; I'll be on the beach when it's cold in the mountains and in the mountains when it's too toasty in the sand. Costa Rica is looking good, Panama. You?