Southbound Train

Eighteen Months

Other people write monthly letters to their children – I, it seems, am going to have to write them to my state because I know that the Piggers can’t read, and the cat just won’t. Tennessee, has it been 18 months already? A year and a half that we’ve known each other in the, hmm, almost biblical sense?

You’re a coy mistress, m’dear, putting out your beautiful finery in those first twelve honeymoon months, filling my days with mild sun and postcard worthy seasons. And then, what happened, my sweet? Did I speak harshly of you? Threaten to leave? Pine for California? No, no, I did not. And yet, you’ve seen fit to punish me with weather that leaves my poor little Los Angeles girl self pruned and a bit moldy.

First there were the spring rains – and these I understood. Spring was a new season for me, arriving late into it last year and then so buried in boxes I missed it entirely. So a rainy spring? Fair enough, I can live with that – and I will say that the storms were a cracking good time to watch. April showers, May flowers – we’re good. But then… what happened? Did spring have to be quite so wet? My garden, you know, was delayed weeks because you saw fit to turn the freshly plowed earth into a swimming pool. The work to get it ready to plant after that was… not worth rehashing. Was it really necessary to rain enough that a spring popped up in that garden? I was being so responsible, planting in the lowest part of the field so as to conserve water, but I didn’t need quite that much gurgling just below the surface. Still spring, showers, rain for the future. I could forgive you this practicality, Tennessee, because I knew the glorious summer was just around the corner.

But what happened? Honestly, dear, summer is meant to be warm, sunny, dry… I’ll even grant you a pass for a modicum of humidity because I know it keeps my views the beautiful green I have come to love. But rain? Real rain, with gray skies and sticky dampness and wet feet splashing across the parking lot? This, Tennessee, was disappointing. I came from a state that regularly greeted my late June birthday with cold fog, and I was counting on you for better. Sure, the day itself was nice, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful, I thank you for that. Not that you had anything to do, really, with my fried chicken lunch at Dotsons or my special menu at Flyte or my wonderful dining companions, here for a summer visit of epic proportions, but I can appreciate the beautiful day I had to do those things in. Still, that weekend held a serious thunderstorm and you know, we can’t go in the swimming pool when there is lightening.

Still, we’re newly in love, you and I, and like any woman in love, I held out hope for you. July, I felt certain, would be glorious. I remembered our blissful summer afternoons together last year, full of flowers and leafy trees ruffled by soft breezes. And then… you tested my love. With the wettest July on record since – when, Tennessee, since the 1870s? And one of the coldest Julys on record, ever. Who angered you then, fickle state? And why are you fixing the same cool and damp eye upon me this year? Do you realize that we had to stop lighting fireworks on the 4^th of July because it was raining too hard to be outside? (yes, I might be raising my voice a little, can you blame me?) We took one set of visitors to the Cumberland Caverns because it looked too gloomy to count on a day of outside activity, and the next day, while canoeing (oh, I do still love you, Harpeth River!) it was beautiful, but too cool to start any water fights. What 7 & 9 year old boys don’t start water fights while canoeing in July, Tennessee? Oh, right – cold ones. I forgot. Then I went to Los Angeles, for a birthday and work, and wow, did you get me back for that little indiscretion – I came home to a monster storm, so big we were drenched just getting into the house, so big that half my corn crop was flattened and my tomatoes were drowned. Yes, drowned. Oh, you didn’t mean to be so harsh, Tennessee? Well, you were… my glorious crop of 20 different heirloom tomato plants, so lush and hearty? They were reduced to sad drooping bits of black stalk, green tomatoes rotting in plenty on every vine. My melons, too, fell victim to your vindictive storm, and the vines rotted, leaving me with a motley collection of half grown, barely ripened melons. The raccoons found the ones with a hint of sweetness that I was leaving out in hopes of some ripening August sun and I got… none of them. The frogs colonized my garden, dear. FROGS. And crawfish. I know I moved to the south, but no one has ever mistaken you for Louisiana, oh new state of mine.

Dare I even speak of the bugs? I suppose now that I’m this far into a love letter gone wrong, nothing is off limits… but the bugs. Oh, really, my dear, did you have to allow so much rain, because the bugs, they flourished. Everyone here pointed to the damp weather and intermittent heat as the culprit, but my skin became a feasting ground. I had so many mosquito bites after an evening of weeding the vegetables that I was sick. The internet told me I had “skeeter syndrome” and you, fickle love, didn’t even send me a get well card. Instead, you sent more bugs, bugs who cared nothing for the Off I used at boot camp in the evenings and bit me anyway. My legs looked like I had measles, so numerous were the red welts, and I Couldn’t.Stop.Scratching. so they looked even worse. I have to grudgingly concede the August was at least warm, but it teetered towards steam room rather than sauna, and call me picky but after the rains in July I would have preferred a bit of dry heat. We even drove to the Smokeys, and it rained there, too. And back to that sad garden of mine? I tried to get fall crops in once it became obvious that the summer ones were, ahem, drowned, but I was foiled again and again – by rain. I know, surprising, isn’t it, that it was too wet to plant in late August and early September! Well, I never.

I really wish I knew what I had done to deserve all of this, Tennessee. I came here in good faith and loved you quickly and truly. I’ve been faithful, even evangelical in my devotion, but you have not repaid me in kind. People keep telling me that this wetness, this plague of rain is so uncommon… but I’m worried. I admit, I did leave you for most of September, but Italy was calling. Of course, you called her first and it rained most of my time there, too. But I missed you terribly when I was in LA for work last month, and I pined for you… still, I returned home to this gloomy rain. Now it is October and lo, it is still raining. We had to exercise inside  this morning, m’dear, because it was thundering and lightening outside, and the rain was falling fast and furious.

I haven’t even mailed this yet, but you must be reading over my shoulder because I see blue sky breaking through out my window, and sucker that I am I can feel my spirits rise, my love for you renewed. Surely the cool, clear incandescent days of fall are just around the corner? October is the dry season here. I know you won’t let me down, Tennessee – this was just a rough patch. You’re so beautiful, and so generally kind, I suppose I can forgive you this bad mood, even if it has lasted going on six months.  I do love you, rain and all. You still love me too, right?

Right?

Time Flies when you’re having Family

That’s the saying, right? It has been a busy sort of spring and now summer is here based on the heat and the thunderstorms and the masses of fireflies hovering above the grass as dusk.  Spring was different this second go ‘round, later and colder and much much wetter than last year. My neighbors assure me that it was “an odd spring” and I’ll take that, because the warmer weather was well overdue in my book when it started showing up in late May. April and May just ran together this year, and we were either away or hosting people more nights than not, the big event being the titular Family Fun that swept into town in honor of my Grandma’s 91^st birthday in late April.

I’ve always yearned for curly hair, a retrousse nose, fine bone structure and a huge family – I imagined I’d marry a man with many siblings and cousins and I would end up with nieces and nephews and a house full of crazy at the holidays. Toss in a perm and a plastic surgeon and I’d be three out of four. Clearly we’ve had epic fail on all counts there, particularly with the nose, but Mike’s small family didn’t really help my case either. When life hands you a paucity of lemons, can you still make lemonade? Our little reunion in April proved that yes, yes you can. It has been a long time since we’ve all been together for more than a few hours, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a few hours nervous about the whole situation. Would we have anything to talk about? Would we argue? Would we be bored? Would they be horrible guests and I a horrid host? Could the house handle sleeping 8? The list of possible pitfalls was tremendous but in the actuality, the worst kerfluffle came simply when Diane tried to hang Grandma’s purse on the back of her chair. That. Simply. Wasn’t. Acceptable.  I’ll challenge any of you to try that little maneuver and keep your hand. A-hem.

Mostly we laughed. A lot. We talked about family history both ancient and recent, set some records straight, recalled Christmases past and considered Christmases future. We drank … well, like fishes. We ate lots of BBQ and lots of Meat & Three and lots of food in general. PK and I reproduced (mostly) the famous Czech Grandmom “buchte” but will live to perfect the recipe. Martha White and her Yeasty Buns featured prominently, as did that most Nashville of events – the Grand Ole Opry.  There was discussion of all living near each other here in this most green of places any of us have ever lived; I think it was our collective European heritage telling us that real people live on fertile farmland, not in the desert.

Maybe the nicest part of the whole weeklong endeavor was that PK and I became friends in a way that was never possible as kids growing up six years and 500 miles apart. We discovered that we share oddities in common that we’ve chalked up entirely to shared genetics, not the least of which being a love of cooking and a sick need to take the scrawniest plant in the nursery home so that it won’t die lonely on the shelf. I’m angling for him to move here and meet some nice Southerner and settle down so that we can look forward to not just a few holidays a year but instead a nice lifetime of Sunday BBQs and bourbon drinking and riotous living, indeed.

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Speaking of riotous living… we celebrated Mother’s Day just a few weeks after the birthday bash by having both our moms here for a road trip to Memphis & Mississippi. We were on the Elvis trail, and we did it up right – a night at the Peabody and front row seats at the Duck Parade, blues on Beale, Lemon Icebox Pie (from Charlie Cavallos Cupboard, natch) and Tupelo to see where the whole Elvis thing began.

In keeping with the wet spring we had plenty of rain that weekend, soaking us thoroughly in Oxford and keeping the car wet all the way to Tupelo. There isn’t much along the side of the road to look at in northern Mississippi but green vines and trees and now at least we know why they are so green. We did stop and look at some great old antebellum homes and learn about the poor Chickasaws who clearly got the short end of the stick. We had a surprisingly good dinner in an extraordinarily funky restaurant, played Hearts, visited a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama and drove home along the Natchez Trace, mile after mile of swooping green parkway and little history and nature stops.  At one point we took the “Old Trace” loop for 3 miles, barely rolling along a barely paved road that took us into a stand of trees so dense that the filtered light was, scouts honor, green. We stopped the car and got out and the silence was amazing, filled with little bits of sound that I’d never notice in a populated place. Rustling leaves and settling gravel, but also tiny breaths of breeze, flowers unfolding, bees pollinating, dust motes settling down on lichen covered rocks and my own inner voice, whispering softly that I was home, home, home.

Somewhere in the last month of visitors and travel and chaos, something about here has become home. I don’t know if it was showing off how pretty it is (Stupidly, like I have something to do with the rolling hills or the cardinals or the dogwoods… geez. All I can take any marginal credit for were the masses of tulips in the front yard) or telling people about it or driving to Memphis twice in the space of one week and feeling how different it is from here. Maybe it was the house guests or the plane rides or the sweet relief of getting off an airplane and being done. Maybe it was surviving, and sleeping, my first two nights alone in the house, but whatever it was, something’s gone to the green side and this feels more like home and less like trying. I’ve got house guests galore in the coming months, so we’ll see how entrenched I feel by then. Maybe some of them will stay. Maybe I’ll manage to recruit the family entirely. One can hope. Home is expansive.

One Year, +2

Spring is a fickle, fickle girl. The tulips are blooming and the peas have come up and this morning we had hail and a tornado watch. A year ago today the movers delivered our furniture and I sat on the front steps marking off boxes and getting sunburned, oblivious to the fact that Tennessee was showing us a kindness in weather; today we had patio chairs delivered in a deluge and I didn’t even venture outside to sign for them.  Daffodils were the first calling card spring delivered this year, glowing swaths of gold that appeared out of nowhere. Then came the Bradford Pear trees, giant white hydrangeas floating midair. The redbuds started next, violet vitality in otherwise bare woods. Then, much to my surprise, the cherry trees were covered in pink frosting. Driving into the neighborhood last April, I contracted my first case of keeping up with the neighbors at the sight of a weeping cherry in every front yard. I promptly planted my own and watched it bloom this year – a full week earlier than I expected. Returning from California, I see there are dogwoods coming into their own now, much sooner than last year…. But we are still bare branched in most places, far more so than I remember a year ago, and I’m wondering where the leaves are. Of course, I’m wondering where we are, too, so the leaves might just be a side effect.

We left Altadena early on April 5th last year, pulling out of town in on a dreary morning in a car packed with unhappy animals and no shortage of mixed emotions. We had to drive (flying with Guinea Pigs is not recommended), but it turned out that the drive was the best thing we could have done for ourselves. The abrupt nature of air travel doesn’t lend itself to life transitions, and I don’t know that I would have been as mentally balanced as I was about the move had our first steps in Tennessee as residents had been on the tarmac rather than at the Visitors Welcome Center off I65. The slow transfer of 2000 miles from ahead to behind let us ease into the idea that we were leaving the west “for real.” The landscape felt familiar through Texas, but somewhere in Oklahoma it began to change, and by the time we woke up last April 8th in Missouri, I knew that we had really left home behind. The final day of driving was the hardest and the closer we got the more knotted my stomach became, but under the knot was also a relief that we were almost done, that we’d made it, that we were starting a whole new adventure once we parked. True or not, I managed to transfer my desire to stop moving to a desire to be here; a cheap trick, but it worked.

A year later, we stepped off a plane and onto that tarmac and I felt as disoriented as though I had never driven the lonely road from there to here. I don’t know that my timing of a trip to California (our first real visit) could have been much worse than to coincide with our anniversary of moving; I spent my time there in an odd haze of feeling like I was home, and my week here since being back in an even odder haze of feeling like I am home. I’d like to make like a guinea pig and get in my chube and stay there until the confusion passes. LA felt very big to me, and busy, and dirty, all things I never really noticed until I’d lived somewhere green and small town and hey, y’all, stop in the middle of street and chat. The persistence of the green here means we don’t have dry roadsides and barren strips – our grass covers more sins. On the other hand, I saw the silhouette of palm trees against a darkening sky, the shape of downtown and the presence of the mountains and I could have cried at the LA-beauty of it all, brash and bare and kind of ugly, except that is isn’t at all.

There were moments, no doubt, when I fervently wished for the life I had left behind to be restored to me, right now, click the heels on the ruby slippers, I’m home. I miss fitting in, having friends, knowing where to go and who to call and wow, the sheer variety of choice on one street. I miss my friends terribly, and saying goodbye to them was just as painful as ever – maybe more, because now I know what it is to live without them. It was odd to know that life there has just marched on, steadily, while we’ve been here moving forward in jolts and spurts and sometimes completely sitting still. There were also moments when I thought how lucky we were to be living here, in the midst of all of this green, with the bulbs blooming and my garden planned, the neighborhood we’re beginning to feel a part of and the space to breathe. I find it easier to let life unfold here without as much strain; my feathers are ruffled less than they used to be. I enjoy getting less worked up, but I do worry if it means I’m getting soft, the Aimee equivalent of Mike driving around Pasadena like a Tennessean, slowly and with consideration for others.

I guess the sum of it is that I don’t wish we’d stayed, but I’m not 100% glad we left. A year isn’t really enough to sort through all the permutations of a complete uprooting of life; it is silly of me to have expected the heavens to open with a proclamation one way or another on April 8th, one year later. I’m still enjoying the differences, still missing the familiar. Maybe it will always be that way – I’ll always be from California in some inalterable way, though I am starting to identify with the things that drew me to Tennessee. I’m waiting until summer, I think, to have truly been here a year anyway. This spring is different from what we saw last year, and besides, we spent all of last year’s spring moving boxes and exploring Home Depot. This year I plan to soak it up, spending more time outside building a garden than indoors building a home. When summer rolls around and I can look outside and say, ah, yes, I remember this, then I’ll consider myself one year gone. Besides, isn’t the honeymoon period two years?

A prelude to considering a year

I’m trying my hardest to remember if there were more leaves when we arrived on this day last year, or less. I know there were more cherry blossoms, less dogwood flowers and a significantly larger quantity of boxes and unknowns. Probably a similar amount of emotional upheaval, since I managed to plan our first trip back to California since moving to coincide with a year of living here, making April 8 the day of arrival in Tennessee times two. I have things to say about this, I think, but if I arrived a year ago today overwhelmed and excited, today just finds me exhausted from a red eye and wishing for the soft embrace of the pillow. The internet connection allows for posting, but the mental capacity has nothing more to say than “ohh, look at the pretty tulips in my front yard.”

More tomorrow.

Beginnings, Again

We’re in our last month of firsts, the homestretch before we reach the year marker, 12 months, 52 weeks and 365 days of not being in California anymore, Toto. The time has flown; it is hard for me to believe it has been that long since we were consumed with boxes and uncertainty. I’ll miss the firsts, once they pass into seconds and then march onwards to thirds and fourths and who knows how manys – experiencing something for the first time, be it red leaves or snow or the return of the robins is an electric thrill. I’m sure that thrill is part of why I travel:  the pleasure of the unknown and the unexpected make the flights and the tiredness forgettable. Living in a new place has been a sort of travel for me, the sedentary kind for sure, with the pleasures unfolding slowly rather than exploding, but I’ve enjoyed it no less for its pace. The anticipation of the new has made the longing for the old bearable; I’ve been able to concentrate on where I am in a new way.

Waiting for the seasons to change here has been one long lead up to Christmas, the anticipation of the first signs of a new stage of time, signaled by some natural thing that I’ve generally only read about. Maybe those seasons are why it feels this year of firsts has gone so quickly. Just when I was wondering when I could wear jeans again, I woke up one morning to honking geese and a change in the air. About when I thought the riot of color across the hills couldn’t sustain itself much longer, it was gone, faded into gray and brown and frost on the lawn. Then came the anticipation of snow, and it arrived right on time, heralding the beginning of the Christmas season with a flourish. Now, as I tire of apples and root vegetables and cold hands, I see clumps of daffodils along the side of the road. My own bulbs are starting to make an appearance and the trees look a bit lumpy with buds. We’ve had a flock of robins lately, hundreds of them wheeling in the yard and filling the bare branches with spots of rusty red. I’ve seen a few bluebirds, too, and heard the chirping beginnings of spring from every quarter.

I’m having a hard time conceptualizing the changes that I know must be coming in the next month, though – we had a snow over the weekend, and I can still see patches of white stuff from my office window. It is melting, but slowly. The buds on the trees are just that – buds. The nights are still dipping below freezing, and it wasn’t exactly warm yesterday evening when we walked along the tracks. Spring may be scheduled, but it has a lot of work to do before it arrives. What amazes me is that when we arrived last year, spring had clearly beaten us – the redbud trees were riots of purple along the roads, the grass was tall and wild and the cherry trees were in full bloom, prompting my first ‘keep up with the neighbors’ moment. Now I have my own blooming, weeping Japanese cherry in the front yard, clearly visible from my office window, and I have my eye on her – but she’s still keeping secrets. The grass hasn’t grown, the red buds aren’t budding and the Whistle Pigs are only beginning to poke their noses out. But it is March 4^th! We drove into our driveway for the first time on April 8^th last year – Mother Nature has one month and four days to produce a miracle.

I think this was the season change I was most excited about and now that it is almost here, I can’t wait. I’m ready for spring food, spring weather, spring green. I want to enjoy the season this year, sitting outside rather than unpacking boxes, walking in the evening rather than fretting about the closets – this won’t be my first spring, but it will be the first one I am free to experience and take in. We have family coming in mid- April, and I’m really rooting for the dogwoods to be showing themselves. Having lived through a winter (however mild) I’m feeling particularly justified in wanting spring, another fresh start. Last year was still, in many ways, limbo. I don’t think the last box was emptied until fall, and the house didn’t feel settled until Christmas. This coming year, though not our first technically, feels like it will be our first in the realities of living here, of being settled, of being. I know that the year changes over in the darkness of winter, but I always think of it happening now, with the emergence of the bulbs and the return of the leaves and the warmth, all new growth and explosion of possibility. It was a happy coincidence to have moved at this time of year, because it allows me to mark my time here in the same way – out of the darkness of winter, new life and opportunity arrives, singing.

Snowbirds, Seasons, Shadows and Snot

All kinds of lovely “s” words today, the most classy and fascinating of course being the snot. But hey, at least I’m no longer talking about that other “s” word of late, septic … and the other obvious “s” word that goes with it. So really, it is a step up around here. Except for the snot, which has claimed my sinuses  for England and isn’t going to give them up without a fight.  I don’t get very many colds and so when I do I am miserable, and I suspect everyone around me is also miserable because I complain and moan and whine and wonder when I will be passing into the hereafter, because this COLD, it is KILLING me.

It is a particularly bad time to be battling the snot because I am scheduled to join the other, more northerly snowbirds on Sunday for a flight to Orlando. I’ll be attending a conference all week, meaning I’ll be sitting in an arctic conference room all week wondering how warm and sunny it is outside and hoping that my nose will stop running. For myself and those that are going to have to be around me, I really hope the snot is under control by then.  Mike is coming for the weekend and we’re going to revel in the warmth of Florida in February where the forecasted lows for the coming ten days are higher  than the forecasted highs for Nashville. While we frolic at the House of Mouse next Saturday it could be snowing at home. I am really starting to understand why birds and old people go south for the winter.

Actually, I’ve enjoyed winter here thus far. Like many of the things I was worried about before we moved, the cold winter has been a non-issue. When it is really cold and hovers below freezing for a few days I make soup, wear scarves and park close to the entrance to the restaurants. It isn’t bad, and I like the bright sunny days that are skin slapping cold. The unexpectedness of the cold air and the pleasure of a warm building afterwards are fun. I know that we don’t have “real” winter here … the snow, though it has fallen quite a few times, has only stuck once. The sky is generally blue and the clouds and wind come through and leave quite quickly. Unlike those unlucky in Kentucky folks, we’ve had power and heat all winter, and with the exception of the time the dirt rollers colonized our furnace, we’ve been toasty warm in the house. (What are dirt rollers? I haven’t a clue, but the man who fixed the furnace said we had a whole mess of them keeping warm over the burners in the furnace and preventing it from lighting.)

The trees are bare; instead of one hundred shades of green, I’m seeing multiple variations of gray and brown, bracing lines against a clear blue sky. Without the shelter of leaves, the birds are on full display, more muted than in the spring and summer but easier to spot. The large tree-ish bush cluster in our back yard is home to a pair of cardinals that flit around. I can see them from my bedroom window, little bright spots even on the bleakest day. The views are different too – I now know that there are houses on some of the surrounding hills that I’d never been able to see, and visually I can see how roads connect now that every corner and rise isn’t frosted with thick green. This is how it looked when we bought the house so it seems a little more familiar than the flamboyant flush of summer. This we’ve seen before and I don’t mind its spare simplicity, or the contract it provides to the beauty that I know is coming.

Still, I do understand the snowbirds. We went to Honolulu for a long weekend in January and the warm air and smell of flowers was intoxicating. Finally I understand the allure of the tropics, especially in the winter. We flew from here to Chicago to LA to Honolulu on a freezing Saturday that started out snowy and made a westward progression to somewhere more compatible with the kind of clothes we were wearing. The white, wan faces of Midwesterners arriving to the warm caress of Hawaii felt strangely familiar this year – we couldn’t get over the sun! the warm! the smell! the Hawaii! I am hooked. Clearly, every January is going to require a trip to St. Somewhere. Jimmy Buffett has it right. I had no idea how much the warmth could appeal … how could I? I’ve had it year round my entire life. I may no longer have warm January afternoons, but at least now I appreciate their glory.

It has been unseasonably warm here for the past few days. Anna visited and brought California weather with her and failed to take it home. I was hoping she’d get the pleasure of a few bracingly cold days, and frankly, I’m not ready for warm weather yet. My bulbs need a few more weeks of really cold nights, and we’d like our trees to get some more rain before things warm up. The great and honorable Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators saw his shadow, and so six more weeks of winter we shall have. Mike thinks the ground hog is crazy, but I think that winter isn’t done with us yet. Besides, I’m going to Florida next week and Phoenix in three and I want to enjoy that delirious rush of snowbird freedom at least two more times.  Meantime, here’s to winter, that much maligned and misunderstood season (also known merely as February in California).  I’m not moving further north anytime soon, but I like Tennessee winter just fine. Good thing, then, that I believe in the groundhog!

Seasonality – or how I learned to love my coat

It is clearly fall here now, slip sliding into winter, and if I had any doubt that I’d left California behind, it has now been solidly proven that Toto, we’re not in LA anymore. I’ve always listed “fall” as my favorite season, but that’s been for the idea of fall: new school year, new books, Halloween and the promise of more holidays. The few cool and crispy days southern California sees somewhere in the warm lead up to Christmas have always been, for me, the most delicious. Visions of baked apples and squash and soups dance in my head the minute October rolls around, roasts and casseroles and cozy food for a cold night. Never mind that my “cold nights” have been, on average, warmer than my sunny days here for the past week – I thought I needed good warming fall cuisine.

Cold night? It was 30° on my screened porch last night at 10pm. T.H.I.R.T.Y. Our little weather station was flashing its ice warning when I stepped outside to see just how thirty felt. Mike’s bare feet said it wasn’t worth more than about ten seconds, but I was slightly more prepared and a lingered longer, feeling the cold slap against my cheeks, resisting my presence and finding all the weak spots in my clothes. Air here has more personality than I’ve ever experienced. It caresses in the spring, bear hugs in the summer and now here it is slapping me like I’ve done something wrong. I have done something wrong, honestly – I’ve been failing to wear my coat.

It isn’t like I don’t want to be warm. I like my coat(s) – buying them, and resurrecting the few second layers that I do own has been fun. My coat closet in LA was mostly decorative, occasionally called into use when I wanted to wear a really light shirt in February, or knew I’d be by the beach after dark, or when my mom was visiting. This coat closet is twice the size, and thank goodness, because I’m in there every day – or trying to be.  Good grief, if isn’t like I don’t have things to keep me warm. The current tally stands:

• 2x soccer hoodies from Europe (the bright orange Netherlands one winning me approving nods from locals who think the orange is for the Vols)
• 2x ankle length overcoats
• 1x triple lined with hood heavy REI-type raincoat (with decorative Japanese kitsch hanging from every zipper)
• 1x sweater coat
• 1x knee length overcoat (so much easier to walk and get in and out of cars in than the long ones)
• 1x lightly lined trench coat
• 1x lightweight fleece
• 2x denim jackets (haaaaaaaaaaa)
• 1x knit poncho (double haaaaaaaaa)
• 1x Patagonia barn coat from high school
• 1x standard San Francisco during the dot com boom black leather jacket
• 1x rain shell
• 1x mid weight fuzzy jacket for wearing under rain shell
• 4x scarves

… and that doesn’t include anything belonging to Mike. If you’re planning a visit in winter, never fear, I’ve got your outdoor needs covered. The thing is, I consistently leave the house without any of these cleverly designed warmth devices – or with the inappropriate ones. Last month we were driving around enjoying the comfortable early fall with the top down when we spotted a sign for a “Haunted Woods” near Leiper’s Fork. Haunted Woods are not around every bend in LA and I was intrigued so we went that evening. I thought I was so clever, wearing heavy weight cargo pants, a thin sweater and a light fleece. I had a scarf, but no socks. The line to get into the woods was over an hour long – and it was 43°. It had been such a pleasant and mild afternoon (much like California) that it never occurred to me that it might get, oh, COLD once the sun went down. By the time we actually got into the haunted woods (which were quite haunted and a good scare) I could barely feel the ends of my fingers.

We’ve been driving around looking at the fall colored trees – what I thought was fall color a month ago was just a warm up for the real color we’ve had in the last two weeks – and the sun generally shines, tricking me into thinking that I don’t need a coat. I look out the window of the house, see sun, assume sixties and hop into the car. Then we get where we’re going and I open the door to a burst of bracing air and shiver. Inevitably, the days I take a coat I barely need one, and the days I forget I pay the price with shivering and cold that ends with me swearing at the seat heaters to hurry up and get warm faster, damnit.

Our CSA held an end of season party at the farm two Sundays ago, and we were the picture of California incompetence. It had been a chilly day, in the high 40’s and low 50’s and it was cloudy. We drove to the farm wondering if we’d be cold, wearing only two layers. I had a trench coat and a scarf – Mike had what amounted to a flannel hoodie. He pretty quickly took my scarf and when we walked up to the bonfire, roaring away at 5pm and doing only a marginal job at spreading warmth and light in the gathering gloom of a cloudy evening we knew we had been outclassed by the weather yet again. The other party-goers were in heavy coats. Hats. Ear muffs. Gloves. We made it an hour before our feeble excuse for outerwear gave up, suffocated by the smoke and completely defeated by the sub 40° evening. We slunk home with the heater on full blast and lamented that yet again, we had completely underestimated the cold.

The stupid thing is that when we travel in cold places, we’re prepared. Christmas markets in Germany? We’re good. St. Louis in January? We did ok. October in Berlin saw us overdressed for what turned out to be a mild weekend… but our own home? We’re woefully stupid about what we need to stay warm when we leave the house.  Having never lived anywhere with real cold, we both assume that long sleeves are enough, and that the distance between the car and the store can’t  be long enough (or cold enough) to warrant an outer layer. Very funny, these assumptions, and we all know what happens when we assume.  We’re going to have to improve, because I’m pretty sure the temperature is going to continue to drop. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to head out to the garden – I have about 200 bulbs left to plant and the sun is shining – the temp has climbed past 40° and I’d better take advantage of it. My coat? Nah, I don’t need it today, I’m sure…

Autumn Journal

I have a bad habit of missing September. The end of summer flurry always slides into anniversary related travel; the time before and the time after a trip seem to blur into undefined space. This year we left early enough to spend our actual anniversary in Italy, then came home only to turn around and celebrate a birthday in Santa Fe. Suddenly, I find myself two days into October with no idea how I got here.

I like the travel, but I resent the abduction of one of my favorite months. September, beginning of the school year, was always a private celebration. I miss the back to school days, filled with squeaky new white tennies and pristine supplies, the promise of blank notebooks and new text books to collect, filled with all kinds of things I didn’t know and the doodles of people I might. I loved the smell of the grocery bags used to cover the books, clean slates for personal design. Fall to me has always been about anticipation: what I might learn, what comes ahead, the waited for coziness of a warm house after a cold evening. I never liked football for itself, but I loved brisk nights in the bleachers, walking around in a jacket and drinking hot chocolate, wondering who I might see and who might be looking for me. September meant fall, and fall meant school and Halloween and Thanksgiving and decorations and Christmas, sweaters and hot chocolate and pumpkins and apples and rainy afternoons that legitimized hours of reading in sweatpants and slippers.

I often tell people that California has two seasons: February and the rest of the year. Add in a little bit of gloom in June (why my birthday month?!?) and you’ve pretty much got it. It isn’t that summers are cold, or that winters are hot, but the weather is so uniformly pleasant that the highs and lows get forgotten in the retelling. I’m excited to live somewhere with greater definition between seasons, and as summer lounged into early September, I was starting to get antsy about when fall might kick her out. One of the final mornings before we left for Italy (where we clearly caught summer’s last hurrah) I was on the white road behind the house and the air felt – different. A little thinner, a little cooler. The smell was different, too, but I couldn’t then (and can’t now) quite put my finger on how. The breeze tugged a few leaves loose from the trees and overhead I heard a classic V formation of honking headed south. Fall, I told Mike, is thinking about arriving.

Now, a month later, it is here. Crisp, cool, slide between ironed sheets air greets me all day, even as the sun manages to warm up the afternoon. The trees aren’t so much shedding as they are shrinking; the voluminous green of the roadside is retreating just a little, a slowly deflating balloon. There are a few trees with yellow and red at the crown, spreading warmth downward, and the rolling hills that are fast becoming my mental image of ‘home’ look freckled with color. I can wear the lightest weight sweater of the collection I bought in August when only the anticipation of wearing them let me survive the heat of trying them on. I bought a pair of corduroys. My jeans might be coming out of semi-retirement, and I am thinking (vaguely) of soup, and of trying my hand at a loaf of bread. I want to do things, but I’m not sure what – I have a sense of contained energy: fall fervor instead of spring fever?

I don’t know what else fall has to show me here, and I like not knowing. I may not be entitled, any longer, to freshly sharpened pencils and unread textbooks, but this year, I’m enjoying the anticipation of not knowing what is to come with the same excitement that I read the table of contents in my old history books. Will I wake up one morning to a brilliantly yellow tree in the back? Will it rain, patchworking the pavement with scarlet and burnt orange leaves, or will it be dry and windy, perfect weather for flying witches and black cats? What will the fields look like once they are all reduced to  golden stubble and the bushes have gone?

Moving has given me an entire year to experience for the first time, a gift of seeing the world slowly turn and morph in way I’ve never experienced, a chance to relearn the seasons and the passage of time.  I return, again, to the idea that I’ve moved into the setting for one of the many books I spent my rainy afternoons engulfed by, the weather here leaning a bit more towards British than California ever did, even with my most fervent imagining. From one of those books I take, also, one of my favorite poems, one that made me wish I was born in a month with more scarlet. It is, to me, the romance of fall:

September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy.
Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.
-Louis MacNiece, Autumn Journal

The Old Man is Snoring

The windows are rattling in their frames, and a white flash of lightening just illuminated my otherwise darkened office. I can hear the cat complaining from the screened porch, where we’ve imprisoned him to dry off. It looks like I need a coat to get the vegetables (but I know I don’t) and I keep thinking that the train is going by, or a large delivery truck is stalled in our drive, but the sheets of gray outside the window remind me that it is just a summer storm.

Summer and storm aren’t really words that go together in the experience of a girl from California. Here, I think summer thunderstorms are as common as politeness and as necessary as sweet tea on a hot summer day. The beautiful green that blankets every inch of our property requires rain – no one has sprinklers – and the word around town is that last summer was miserable, for both the heat and the weeks without a single drop of rain. We’ve been snickering a little when people tell us this, because weeks without rain can easily describe Southern California any time of any year, and the El Nino winter that prompted me to always carry an umbrella in my trunk was an anomaly that hasn’t returned since. The nurseries here are advertising “drought-tolerant” plants, and while I know, really, that this was a serious drought for here, I have a hard time accepting that the green paradise we saw last July when we first came to look at houses was actually experiencing drought.

As new Tennesseans and new tree parents, we’re learning to say things like “we could use a little rain” and while I still feel conspicuous saying those words in the face of all this green, I know it is true. Last week we had a laundry list of trees planted: a magnolia whose placement caused a serious disturbance in the force that is our internet/phone/cable connection, a trio of redbuds, a brace of dogwoods, a solitary (but already very tall) Tennessee Tulip and a veritable orchard of fruit. We’ve been dragging hoses around and awaiting the UPS delivery of “tree gators” for a week now, babying the Japanese contingent of weeping cherry in front and fiery red maple in back, so it was a relief to see the storm clouds gathering last night. “Is that lightening?” quickly turned into “I think we might get some rain” and from there it wasn’t long until we reached “We’re going to get wet.”

Get wet we did, as we were driving back from a dinner at the bar of Flyte, making good on our promise to be regulars there in a way we never had the time or space (or good candidate restaurant) for in Pasadena. We’d come down 31 all the way from Nashville with the top down on my car when the dots on the windshield turned into plops and very quickly thereafter into rivulets. As long as we slouched we stayed mostly dry, the wind of fifty stretching the rain into silver streaks above our heads. The air was sultry but not sticky, the fresh patter and whiff of water hitting pavement and leaf swirled around the car and mixed with the radio I turned up as if in defense against the water. “If we stop, we’ll be drenched” I yell, laughing, as an 80’s dance song wails from the speakers. Slowing down is certain shower time, so we push on to the house as fast as possible, Mike running stop signs, me holding my hair in a twist to keep it from knotting and singing along. I hit the garage door button as we turn into the drive and it is up by the time we get there, spilling dry yellow into the night like landing lights. In we go, gasping, and as we stop the tiny streams held back by speed fall suddenly onto our laps and shoulders. A few errant drops bead the dash and the air vent has an odd square of condensation, from blowing cold into a warm evening, whistling in the wind. Breathless from the daring of three miles in a rainstorm with no roof, I decide that summer storms might be the most fun.

Franklin, the Beautiful

I’ve always been distrustful of the way summer is portrayed in magazines. Who actually changes their behavior in the summer to the extent that is purported? When you’re working, can “lazy summer days” and “hot evening meals” really mean anything? Who goes to summer festivals? Who has neighborhood parties?

Um, I stand corrected.

I guess the problem wasn’t the magazines, or summer: it was me. Living in 11 months of summer. And maybe Los Angeles itself. Pasadena never went all out for the Fourth – I think most of Southern California is just too cool to celebrate America, or, honestly, too disconnected from the idea to care. I expected things to be different here, in the same way that I expected corn to taste better (it does) and people to be friendlier (they are) but I didn’t have a concrete idea of how. I didn’t expect to stumble into a full color July issue magazine spread – but I have.

Thursday evening we went to the neighborhood Fourth of July party, up by the pool. I didn’t know that many people lived in our neighborhood, to be honest, and there were more kids running around in dripping bathing suits, screeching and playing with sparklers and generally looking like a promotion for All-American-Good-Clean-Summer-Fun than I thought possible. We sat with our neighbors and met other neighbors and acted neighborly, and if I’m overusing the “neighbor” word here, it’s just that the whole thing is such a novelty. We’ve had neighbors, sure, but never of the group-socializing kind. When we lived in an apartment, I didn’t know (by sight or name) the people we shared a wall with. In Redwood Shores, we had friends living a few feet away, but the overall neighborhood was not a community. It would have made sense, there, to have street parties and BBQs and gatherings at the pool, but people didn’t mix. In Altadena, the extent of “over the fence” conversation was our uphill neighbor complaining about the smoke from our BBQ. I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood either, so the whole idea of people sitting outside and talking to the people they live near is foreign, and oh so enticing. I wanted a neighborhood out of this move, and it looks like I’ve gotten one.

The BBQ dinner was catered by the association, and everyone was asked to bring “a dessert to share.” There were plates of watermelon, and a few packages of store-bought cookies and cupcakes, but the majority of the sweets were homemade, and they were good. Really good. Mike says we’ve moved to dessert land, and I have to agree – people here eat dessert, and they know how to make it. A groaning table at this party proved the point – we had all kinds of baked squares, Watergate salad and homemade banana pudding, and between that and the pulled pork sandwiches, I was pretty much in eat outside heaven. We used our portable chairs and our mini cooler and our wine sticks, and overall I felt clever to be outfitted with the requisite conveniences even though we’ve never had such an event to attend before. I think I always bought items for the idea of parties like this, much in the same spirit of “if you build it, they will come.” Maybe it worked?

It seemed oddly familiar at the time, the sitting outside and chatting and dusk and sparklers, the light buggy-ness and the smell of hot grass and the fireflies through the cordite mist – but I couldn’t place it until now, when I realize it reminded me of a hot Fourth I spent in Carthage South Dakota; I couldn’t have been more than seven. I remember a park by the river, hazy air and exploding fireworks, heat and heavy sleepiness, being slightly dirty, furred by dried sweat coated with fine dust, a lazy feeling of nothing to do and nowhere to go. It doesn’t get much smaller town than Carthage these days, and I’ve not made the connection until now, but there is a bit of that little prairie town mixed into this Southern adaptation of Ojai. Sitting under the trees, I’m not sure if I should be drinking with the adults or running with the kids: I’m new here, but somehow this feels familiar, a tradition I can slip right into, preprogrammed from ancient memory and years of wishing for it.

Franklin was throwing a party on the Fourth (and Fifth), so we headed to town mid-afternoon to wander the streets, look at the booths and listen to the live music. There were three stages, and on the main one we walked into a full-on impassioned performance of Freebird, complete with a guy with a camera phone pressing himself to the stage edge, recording every breathless second. A young guy lunged through the crowd, waving a flag and punching his fist in the air, and a bunch of people swayed and sang along. A little kid with a red white and blue tri-spiked Mohawk bounced through the crowd, grinning. I wanted to make fun of the whole spectacle, in that cynical, I’m so from California where we don’t do things like this way, but I couldn’t bring myself to dismiss it completely. Yes, it was terribly clichéd, but somehow the heart that everyone was putting into it won me over. I wasn’t lifting a lighter, or anything, but I couldn’t help smiling.

I smiled, too, later that evening when the entire neighborhood was awash in color and smoke and popping: I think everyone was setting off some sort of explosive. We could have watched any number of personal shows from the front porch, but nothing exceeds like excess, so we hopped in the car with 10 minutes to spare and raced to the town show with the top down and the radio up. We started seeing the rockets’ red glare once we crested the hill above town, and we watched it all the way to the high school parking lot on the north side of Franklin, where we parked with countless other people also staring up at the sky. Fireworks have always made me get a little teary; nostalgic for something I can’t put my finger on. These were no exception, and as I watched I saw myself like a character in a movie – sitting in a convertible on a warm summer night, watching fireworks with the radio on, in a peaceful spot in a quiet corner of a beautiful country. This was a montage scene, no doubt: girl takes big risk and moves to small town, finds love and contentment and reconnects with the meaning of life. The camera pulls back to show uplifted faces colored by the flashes of firework red and white and music swells and all is right with the world, at least for that moment. And it was.

Perhaps I underestimated Nashville…

No, I’m not back to posting photos of the pantry. This is the International Market in Nashville, around the corner from Belmont College and wedged onto a slightly morning after street littered with outdoor bars, crooked student housing and a new-agey tattoo parlor. Also, and more pertinently, about 20 miles from my house, but bearing a striking resemblance to the “thai curry” section of the aforementioned pantry. I guess I should let them know that when they run low on cans of Panang, I can help out in a pinch.

The International Market serves food, too: fresh noodle dishes being at the top of my list of concerns, and has jasmine tea from a dispenser. Iced tea in TN is “sweet” or “un” – here there is also a tea silo sweating under the label “jas.” We shared a pad kee mao, because it was there and it seemed silly to pass it up, and it was … good. Better than good, actually; head and shoulders above any other Thai we’ve found here. The noodles were right: lightly elastic and with that odd patina of rice gluten grease that marks really authentic tasting stir fry. The pork tasted like pork, and the basil was fresh, and they had added Chinese broccoli which worked better than I expected. A dash of hot chili flakes and we were almost in LA. It wasn’t Sanamluang, but what is? If this is my authentic Thai food, I’m really not suffering. I would like to know, though, why they stock straw mushrooms in bulk and every Thai restaurant I’ve been to here serves soup with sliced white buttons? I need to start taking cans with me when I eat out.

Thanks to a tip from a waiter, we’ve also found real Vietnamese food, something I was sure would be out of reach here. Miss Saigon is in one of the many mini malls that make up the megalith of Cool Springs (want to buy something? I think they sell it, whatever it might be, there). It looks, inside, just like a basic Asian restaurant in LA: bare floor, oddly cheap chairs, deep booths in a garish color and “cultural art” on the walls. No matter – the menu is in both Vietnamese and English, and they pull no punches about the flavors or the ingredients. Pho can be had with beef tendon! We started with fresh spring rolls and peanut dipping sauce, and they were right. Just right – clean and cool and crisp and oh, such a relief to know I can get them here without having to make them myself. I had pho for dinner, and Mike had a noodle bowl with pork that was just as good as anything we’ve had in LA, and I think my shoulders dropped about two inches that evening, even with the amount of caffeine that must have been swirling in my syrupy café sua da. Vietnamese is perfect hot weather food, developed and adapted as it is to a land where the humidity makes Southern heat wilt in defeat. I’m looking forward to eating my way through the menu this summer.

Speaking of summer, though, I think we’ve brought California weather back with us. Days are hot, yes, but we’ve had minimal humidity and a light breeze, and even though I don’t want to be doing manual labor in the middle of the yard, I’m not uncomfortable walking. Evenings, though, are just perfect here – warm, soft, full of chirping and calling and sweet smells. I want to live outside at night, sipping some fancy drink and relaxing. It is cool enough to eat outside too, and we did that last night, eating GOOD BURRITOS. Mike found Blue Coast Burrito while I was still on the Blue Coast, and the place was clearly decorated by someone who lived in California. It is Baja-Surf in theme, but it works, as does the food, and most spectacularly, as do the fish tacos. And the guacamole. And the spicy shredded chicken, and the tortillas, which, if they aren’t Reubens-perfect are at least thin enough to taste right wrapped around meat, beans, rice, cheese and a little sour cream. I’ve been home a week and we’ve been there twice and I’m wondering if I can talk Mike into going back. Like, oh, tomorrow? They also carry Las Paletas, gourmet Mexican-style popsicles made by a small company in Nashville. I had the plum, and the best way I can describe it was eating real Italian gelato frozen into popsicle form. It may not be Southern, but it is going to be something I feed people who come here to visit.

I’ve had BBQ since I was back too, twice, and I’m enjoying my CSA vegetables and my Viking and my kitchen, but it is awfully comforting to know that I have options here when it comes to food that hasn’t been boiled with a bit of salt pork. Aside from the people (and let’s not muddy the fact that there is no comparison here in terms of ‘how much’) going back to LA reminded me that one of the things I miss most is the wide availability of different types of food. Not that there aren’t good options here, and some really fabulous food, but I was feeling a bit scratchy that I couldn’t run out for pho here. Now I can. Tennessee is a new boyfriend this week, pulling out all the stops to make me happy. I’m enjoying the attention.

Homesick

This is my third Friday in the office, and I’m homesick – but I don’t really know for where. Driving to work yesterday morning in the fresh California brightness, I looked up towards the mountains and had a physical pang of missing here. I’ve had my share, certainly, of missing people, but sitting in traffic on Fair Oaks (an unlikely place to miss any locale) I suddenly, violently, missed here.

I have a bad habit of being homesick before I leave on a trip. No matter how anticipated the adventure, I spend my pre-departure days moping and missing my home, my guinea pigs, my husband. Simple things like watering the flowers or finishing the peaches before they get mushy become monumentally important. I’m mopey and tired and whiny and for someone who likes to travel so much, I suspect I’m generally just a pain in the ass. Once I leave home, though, it ceases to exist for me and I find that I don’t miss it at all. This also, I’m sure, makes me a pain in the ass.

This trip started true to form: as much as I wanted to see all my California peeps, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving home. I was just starting to feel settled. I had a garden to deal with, trees to be planted, walls to paint. Although the boxes are all unpacked, the house still isn’t even approaching finished, and I wanted to work on it. There was a home tour in Franklin that I wanted to take. And a horse show I wanted to see. And I was sure that the ONLY good vegetables of the summer would arrive and depart these three weeks that I was suffering in LA. I felt sorry for myself all the way here, through two delayed flights and a lack of dinner and an insufferably long four hour flight from Chicago, and then I got off the plane, saw Dana and was happy. Post-midnight hot dogs at Pinks, LA in the dark, the smell of the night flowers and the dramatic entrance of two fat raccoons – I hadn’t been here but two hours and I was happy. Tennessee was a faint memory. I know. I’m a pain in the ass.

The longer I’ve been here, though, the more I’ve missed my new home. I miss the stillness of the house, the green out the windows and the wild turkey. I miss the pleasantness of the people, the exploration of a new place, the fact that we aren’t the only people who stop to move errant turtles off the road. I miss the slower way of talking and being, and I miss the stillness in myself that I’ve only just begun to discover. I miss the guinea pigs, of course, and the sweet tea, and have I mentioned the green? I miss the green.

At the same time, if that is “newhome” this is still “home.” And I miss home too. I miss the cool overlay of summer mornings, when the birds call and the world seems still and fresh. I miss the rough outlines of the mountains, the abundance of great food of every variety. I miss knowing where I am going without thinking about it. Most of all, I miss people. I’ve started to think of the D-squared house as home, as in “when I get home” and “on my way home” and that comfortable tug of residence I feel when I walk in the door. I miss it already – I miss them already. I miss being a part of people’s daily lives, the easy in and out of conversations that are picked up and put down like magazines. I even walked through the office this week and vaguely (I know!) missed being here. I know, of course, that I’m going “newhome” on Monday, and part of me can’t wait. The other part of me is totally refusing to accept the idea that I’m leaving again, and goes about blithely making mental plans for stopping by so and so’s house, or doing a Disney evening, or eating sushi on Wednesday.

Three weeks seemed impossibly long, and now it feels impossibly short, and I realize now that you can’t, ever, go home again. I’m floating here, part way between what was and what will be, and I find myself a melancholy and not a little bit conflicted. I want, intensely, two different things and I know, inherently, that I can’t have both – my heart aches more than just a little. I can’t figure which place I miss more, the one I’m going back to, or the one I’m in now. All I really know is that a part of me is there, and a part of me is here, and I don’t know how to change that (or even, really, if I want to).

Déjà LA

I’ve been back in LA for a week, and in some ways, it feels like I never left. I walked into the office last Thursday and it was so familiar I wondered if I hadn’t been gone at all. Like a dream, the reality of Tennessee faded to a warm feeling and a faint imprint, and as I stared at the tiles in the bathroom, the patterns of the carpet, the (lack of) light in my cube I wondered where I’d been these two months.

Oddly, I don’t feel any pull to the old house. I haven’t once turned that way or felt a need to drive up the hill. My brain has accepted the idea that I don’t live there anymore -living here it isn’t as sure about. It follows, of course, that everything feels familiar; I lived here for almost six years, and around here for many more. California is a part of who I am, and coming back is slipping into my most comfortable pair of broken in running shoes, blister free. Tennessee, in all its green glory and languid charm, hasn’t yet made it to my bones. These, though, the concrete glare and the gray green of the palms, the brown faces of the mountains and the sun bleached look of the streets, the mix of cars and people and traffic and sound, the low hum of the freeway and the soft morning air scented with the calls of doves – these I claim as mine.

I’m enjoying myself: burning the candle at both ends and cramming as much in as I possibly can. I’m appreciating the multitude of freeways, options galore for going anywhere I want. I’ve seen the beach and the Mouse, eaten from the highest and lowest of tables (and been equally satisfied at both), worked and talked and laughed. I’ve been to the glitter of the west side, the quiet of South Pas, the congestion of the 5 as it winds through the bleak center of LA. I’m not thinking about home – where that might or might not be for me today, tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow. In the planning this seemed too long, this sojourn with los angeles, but now that it is melting into warm days and bright nights it seems that it could never be long enough. I met friends of a friend this past weekend who wanted to know where I was from – I couldn’t answer. I suspect that I won’t be able to for quite some time.

It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

I didn’t want a new house. When I thought about moving, I always pictured us in a leafy, in-the-city neighborhood, fitting ourselves into an early 1900s house with hidden secrets, odd bathrooms that were fitted in long after the house was built and storage problems. I like the character of old houses, I like wondering about who lived there and what happened in each room. I like the permanence of them, and the mellow grace they acquire as the trees in the front grow taller and the wood on the floor mellows. I’ve always had a daydream of living in a Norman Rockwell neighborhood, with a front porch and a screen door and a little picket fenced yard. I was willing to take less space and more hassle to fulfill that daydream … but in this case, more practical minds (read: Mike) prevailed. Our last house was built in 1946; I was hoping to buy its gracious elderly aunt. Instead, I’m living in its modern, New South grandchild.

Sixty years makes a big difference – and not just in the square footage. These new windows open easily and shut firmly; this new house is airtight, and the temperature inside is constant. I miss the look of the old wood paned beasts from LA, but I so enjoy the lower levels of dust that I’m not complaining. The garage is big enough for us to pull in AND get out of our cars without interesting yoga moves, and we never had to worry about where the John Deere would live – it fits in front of my car. The laundry is in its own room, IN the house, and my days of walking in and out of the garage and having to back a car out to wash clothes are blissfully in the past. Mike is thrilled that hanging art no longer involves drilling into plaster and hoping like hell that the first hole is right, because taking it out will create a crater. My kitchen could probably hold three of my old kitchen, and you won’t hear me complaining about that either. Ahh, progress.

Before we go spinning off to the modern and convenient future, though, I must succumb to my inner luddite contrarian and look out the windows, where I am dutifully reminded that all the wireless networks and linen closets in the world can’t replace established gardens; virtual picket fences do not a charming front yard make. New houses, for all their interior goodness, tend to look like they’ve been plunked down on a stretch of open space, with none of the gracious permanence that trees lend. Our house was a year old when we bought it, and its landscape is, correspondingly, just learning to walk. There are beds in front, and there certainly is a lawn to mow (albeit a disturbingly weedy lawn). There’s even a deck sticking off the back, with steps down to… well, to nothing, more or less. With two acres, I don’t expect every area to be manicured, but I really dislike that the areas around the house look raw. Enter, stage right, Zach & Calvin & Angie. Enter, stage left, my checkbook. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We’ve been talking to landscape and stone people for about a month, and they’ve run the gamut from professional and not exciting to young and unorganized to failing to call us back with a bid to just plain interesting. The guys we chose, Zach & Calvin, not only do beautiful stonework, but they seem to know everyone in town, have done all sorts of interesting things and are just plain fun to talk to. They’ve been in charge of the stone, and Angie is in charge of the trees, and I’m learning as much as I can about growing things here every time I talk to her. I ruined a pair of shoes walking around the tree lot in the mud, but she helped us pick trees and told us which ones to avoid (regardless of popularity) and what would really grow here. This is such different climate that I’m going to be learning as I go, so it is nice to talk to someone who really knows and is happy to share.

The flagstone patio off the deck was step one, a giant puddle of stone that seemed to grow every time we discussed it. It took Zach and Calvin about a week to create, and I loved going out in the mornings to chat with them as it moved from roped off green area to poured cement (there was a cement truck! In my back yard! I think I was instantly transformed into a 5 year old boy from the excitement!) and finally to laid stone. We moved the patio furniture and the Pig down last Friday and it feels good to have an outdoor space that is ours- no longer does the deck step down to nothing. Trees are coming next – last night Angie stopped by to flag the spots for the magnolia, the redbuds, the dogwoods, the tulip tree, the fruit trees, the Japanese cherry AND the Japanese maple – and the lilacs! I think that by the time I get back from LA, I’ll be coming home to a place with a little more tree-lent permanence, and a few less bare walls meeting bare earth. Now that’s progress.

the beginning

the middle

the end (full set of photos in the Ponteuf Burrow album)

For Posterity...

…I must note that on Tuesday, May 13th at somewhere around 10 pm, I stood on my own driveway and saw FIREFLIES. I’m glad I saw them then, because I also saw them the following night while sitting on the screened  porch drinking a very nice zinfandel and we were far enough into the bottle that I might have blamed the zooming bits of luminescence on the wine.

I know they are bugs, truly, I do. I know they are common to the south. I know that most people around here don’t give them another thought, and even worse call them Lightening Bugs which I think is coarse and awful and loses all the magic. I’m a little grossed out that they are flying beetles and a little charmed that they are the state insect of Tennessee, and I just read that the females sometimes lure males with flashes for (as Wikipedia puts it, with just a touch of potboiler) “the sole purpose of predation.”

I’m looking forward to an entire summer of zooming trails of green in the hedges. Sitting on the porch watching them, Mike called it that I was so pleased I was like a puddle of goo. It’s true. Kind of like having that first, bayou part of Pirates of the Caribbean in my own home. I could almost feel the boat rocking (but that could have been the wine)!

Limbo (and not the kind with the stick)

I’m unpacked – but I’m not. I’m working – but not in an office. I’ve socialized here – but I don’t have any friends. I know where I’m going – but nothing is familiar. I live here – but I don’t. It sure is pretty – but I have left the holiday stage and moved into the where am  I and how did I get here stage, and oh! I think this might be culture shock.

It’s been a little more than a month since we pulled into the driveway for the first time, a milestone that passed me by without much notice. My mom came last week, and I was spending my pre-visit waking hours wondering how I could make it look nice in the house before she got here, and my visit hours obsessing about furniture, antiques and curtains as she and I went on “panel hunt 2008,” racking up $2000 of curtain purchases that she left me to return on my own. The living room windows now have panels, though, and yes mom they are even ironed and tabbed correctly. With all that going on, I vaguely noted that we’d been here a month, and moved on. A month! A month of boxes and furniture shopping and eating out and driving around. A month where we’ve seen all the trees turn from sticks to trees, where I’ve seen the dogwoods come and go, seen the lawn need mowing 5 or 6 times. A month where I’ve been in the honeymoon phase of moving: with a complete and obvious lack of routine, everything is fun and vacation-like. I feel no compunction to make my bed. I might as well eat out. Stay up till 1? Why not?

In the past few days, though, I’ve felt a shift towards normalcy. I’m tired of the bed being messy, of stepping over things that don’t yet have a home, of looking in a stocked pantry for something I want to eat and finding only sauces and canned fruit. It’s begun to irritate me that the hammer is never where I left it, or the measuring tape is gone again, or that there are boxes on the floor. I’m craving Mexican food, the one thing I can reliably NOT get here, and have been to Baja Fresh “because it tastes like home” twice in the past week. Mmmmm. A sure sign that I’ve entered the negotiation phase of culture shock. The different sausages at the grocery store are no longer amusing because, HELLO, the fish selection is miserable. I caught myself in the fish aisle the other day thinking “well, when I get back to LA at least I can go to … oh, shit.” Oh shit is right. There is no “back to LA” – not in a permanent sense, at least. And while there are a lot of good things here, I’m at an odd place where I’m taking them for granted and noticing the things I don’t want to.

It has been a little thunderstorm-y this week, and consequently oddly stuffy outside when the temp rises and before the rain falls. I go out there and feel prickly and miserable and wonder how I’ll ever be able to stand it. I don’t like that glasses with ice in them sweat so much, even in the house. I miss talking to people at work, am annoyed when Mike has a schedule that doesn’t mesh with mine – and then annoyed when he does, because I want to talk to someone other than him. The trash man has stopped taking our overdoses of boxes, and I am fretting about where they will go, and I still have more to unpack.

The last ten percent of any project is the hardest, and while I think I’m nowhere near only 10% left to do, I’ve reached a roadblock of hard with the house. I’m sick of unpacking, sick of not knowing where things will go, sick of envisioning furniture that isn’t here. I’m sick of working at the kitchen table, sick of things all over my counters, and really really sick of the boxes in my office, which mock me constantly and are going to get tossed in the trash if they don’t SHUT UP soon. I unpacked something on Wednesday that gave me the most horrid allergy; I woke at four am with a burning, runny nose and my eyes and the nose continued to drizzle all day yesterday. I seem to be on the mend today, but now I’m afraid of what will turn up as I continue to open boxes, and I don’t want to.

There’s the root of it. I don’t want to do any of this. With my office left to unpack, STILL, and most of the “decorative crap” that was in my hall closet now in boxes in my new hall, I have plenty left to do. Never mind that I have walls to paint, art to frame, curtains to order or make… rooms to decorate. Oh and a house to clean, because I keep wondering where the maids are, only to realize they are in LA and not coming. The boxes make me feel that I shouldn’t have to clean, they prevent me from doing what I want to do, which is decorate. I know they must be addressed, I do, but  I. Don’t. Want. To. Unpack. Them. On the other hand, I am itchy with displeasure that they are still there, that the house is a mess, that my friend will arrive tonight and see the house LOOKING LIKE THIS. And yet, I can’t seem to get off my kitchen chair and make it happen. I work during the day, and then, at night when I should be unpacking, I look at curtains online, or hunt for Chinoiserie wallpaper sites, or interesting stencils. None of which I can act on until I unpack. I’m procrastinating, and procrastinating makes me out of sorts. I know it isn’t good but I can’t shake it, and perversely I don’t even want to. I pick fights with poor Mike, because he’s here. I don’t go plant my berries, because I have to unpack boxes. I don’t make a plan, because I feel like everything is in chaos.

I’m prickly and crabby and generally in limbo, and there isn’t much I can do about it but wait it out, grit my teeth and unpack another *&%%$# box. And if that centipede comes back, so help me, I am getting on an anythingbutsouthbound train.

Violated in my own home

Here’s some schadenfreude for those of you who think that things can’t really be all that good in Tennessee. Just to brighten your day, I’d like to present the tiger centipede:

Sunday morning I sat down at my faux office table to check on the breakfast hours at Monell’s. I was, as usual, barefoot. I had my foot propped against the leg of the chair, minding its own business when I felt an odd stinging that pretty quickly turned into an odd hurt. I shook my foot, and the stinging intensified and moved from annoying to bee sting. I shook my foot harder and a long black something went sailing across the rug and STARTED MOVING once it landed. Something resolved (through prickles of pain induced tears) into a long blackish worm shape with multiple legs and what looked like horns on its head.

I made Mike trap it and he and Jake disposed of it and I asked three or four (hundred) times for them to confirm that it had gone down the toilet, and the hair on my arms stood up for quite some time. Actually, it is standing up again as I type this. I really don’t want to be violated by a nasty crawly in my own house, ever again. It seems to be a random, one off sort of thing… we’ve not seen another, and we really don’t even know where it came from. And I need to stop talking about it because it is making my head itch.

(if you want a little frosting on your schadenfruede today, Tennessee is home to two  venomous mammals (who knew there were any?!) the Northern Short-tailed and the Southern Short-tailed Shrew. Luckily they are only 3 – 4” long and are considered harmless to humans. That’s good because I have my hands full with the centipede, thanks)

Things that go bump in the night

Today we’ve had our second tornado warning. Radio goes to the “emergency broadcast system” noise, and then the nice and verrrry calm voice of the national weather service comes on to let us know that there is a “tornado watch” for local counties. So far, we’ve not heard “Williamson” but we’ve certainly heard tell of possible twister formations in “Davidson” and really, that’s not so far away. I also hear that tornados don’t really respect county lines (or dry counties). I think it might be time to get out a map and figure out what towns and counties are close by so we can decide to be nervous based on geographic reality rather than vague interpretation.

Actually, (and I’m sure that I’m asking for it) but I find the warnings exciting … I like the thunderstorms. They offer the charm of the rain hitting the roof, the fresh smell afterwards and the strong, exhilarating, somethingwickedthiswaycomes wind that scared the cat up a tree this afternoon. We only found him by the piteous Mr. Howl sounds carried thinly in the gale, and had to coax him down with promises of a warm place to curl up and just a little more of the happy pill, Coleridge. Maybe the truth is that I’m thrilled that I get a warning here rather than being snuck up on a la earthquakes. Speaking of which, there was one (of those that shall not be named) one of the first mornings we were here. Local residents reported “movement.” The Californians slept right through it. A 5.4 hundreds of miles away? Pshaw, we thought, this is not enough to wake pros like us.

Not so the tremendous thunder and lightening show last Saturday night. I dreamt that there were people running around the second story in heavy boots, and they were starting to piss me off with all their wall shaking when someone inconsiderately flashed strobe lights into the bedroom and woke me fully. Thunder echoed and the bed shook a little and I realized that this was a full blown electrical storm – completely dry outside and eerily loud and bright. I hate to admit it, but I had a hard time going back to sleep.

And then there’s that pesky southbound train. The tracks really do run right behind the house, and I’ll take a photo (once the current deluge lets up and the sun returns) to prove that it isn’t literary fantasy. I’m charmed by the train, I like its whistle, I like counting the cars, I like seeing them flash by through the ever thickening wall of green between us and it. I don’t like the new habit it has developed of early morning runs, because when I hear that whistle blow at 4:30am, it is NOT music to my ears.

Officially cleared for Sweet Tea

 

Y’all, I am so established! My car has Tennessee plates, I have a local ATM card, a voter registration card and a real, honest to goodness Tennessee drivers license. In a show of just how nice people are in Tennessee (or in an honest realization that in the land of lemon icebox pie and BBQ no one would tell the truth) there is no weight printed on the license. This is a lovely thing.

While the TN equivalent of the DMV is significantly cleaner than the one I went to in LA, and lacks the four inch thick bullet proof Plexiglas that protects the customers from the wrath of the employees (or was it supposed to be the other way around? I’m not sure – the last time I was in the CA DMV the woman I talked to made me cry) it isn’t paradise. Relativity is key here, I think – the woman who helped me was nice. The woman sitting next to her was nice. While I was at the counter someone called in about getting their son a state ID so that he could fly for a school trip. Tomorrow. The caller did not have access to a birth certificate for her son, and therefore couldn’t get an ID. Both women working felt very badly for the boy, and I heard “bless his little heart” uttered more than once. I explained the layout of the California Plexiglas purgatory I’m used to, and they were both shocked. Oh, and I got to use a credit card. For the all of $26 it cost me to be a legitimate driver here.

Still. Let’s not get too carried away. The DMV is the DMV, no matter what name they call it here. Some things never change. Like the sterile waiting room with rows of chairs, designed to corral people together and break their wills and curb their natural flight instinct. No clock is visible and the number letter combinations which dictate the rhythm of life within the building seem arbitrary, the method for calling them even more so. Signs offer waitees the ability to register to vote, and admonish us that cell phone use is prohibited (amazingly, people comply) and that by law we need to give bikers a 3 foot berth. Oh, and the waitees themselves. Everyone drives, I suppose, but the cross section of humanity waiting with me in purgatory there was quite colorful. A gen-u-ine cowboy walked in wearing a leather vest and hat, spurs clinking on the floor as he took his number and shifted the bowie knife on his hip before sitting down. A Whiskey Tango mom and daughter duo bickered across from me, the younger in teal eyeliner and painted on jeans, the elder in knock-off crocs and a t-shirt. Younger left twice for a smoke, elder complained about younger’s phone calls and boyfriend but said not a word about the pack of menthols. They snapped gum and snapped at each other the entire time I was there. An Indian couple roamed around, he firm in the belief that if he just stared at the people behind the counter, they would take him out of order, she firm in the belief that he had to be within arms reach at all times. As I was leaving an older couple came in, apparently related to the younger, and boldly cut in line, proclaiming that “someone told them…”

Really though, I can’t complain, because my new license is valid until my fortieth birthday which currently seems a comfortable distance away. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some sweet tea to be attendin’ to.

Nothing Runs Like a Deere

The limitations of computing sadly prevent me from providing the best part of the activity currently in progress behind the house – the if-colors-have-smells-this-must-be-green’s scent of freshly mown grass. Oh yes, my friends, mown grass.

The grass was high when we got here two weeks ago. It has grown since. In places it comes up to my knees, and two acres of knee high grass call for one thing, and one thing only… a ride on mower.

We bought it Saturday. (Stop snickering, you’d need one too). Trooped into the local John Deere dealer like the collection of ignorant city-folk-from-Los Angeles that we were, and Mike asked questions while Anna and I tried not to fall over our own snickering. Contrary to all our expectations, the salesman was low pressure and Mike paid fine American dollars for a mid-range ride on mower (with cup holder) to be delivered to the house free of charge. He asked if drinking while mowing was acceptable, and the salesman (who was clearly dying for us to leave so he could laugh with the other guys in the store about those silly Californians) assured him that as long as he stayed on his own property it might be mandatory. Anna and I mostly giggled.

Sadly, Anna missed the mower’s delivery yesterday morning, and the mower’s inaugural run yesterday afternoon. I know she would have giggled when Mike rolled down the drive, and certainly when I got scared of the power of the John Deere in Speed 5 and had to slow down. Two acres is a lot of ground, but the Deere made pretty quick work of it, though Mike is out there right now tidying up, since there are lots of high patches we both missed yesterday. I think in the lawn battle, the score is looking like Deere, 9, Lawn, 1 (it stalls in too high of grass).

The cat is afraid of the sound of the Deere, and Mike is cruising around with the biggest grin on his face. Anna, I wish you were here to see it – these are for you:

First the back 40, before the application of the Deere:

Ahh, sweet mower:

 

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