Friday, February 20, 2015

Postcards from... WTF? That's not Billy.

It's done. The ramble has ceased temporarily. Everything was in Seattle, here:


Now it's in Tucson, here:

And here:

...and everywhere else in the house. 

Everything happened between there and here and I was too busy or tired or overwhelmed to tell the tale. I suppose sometimes life is just like that. We have learned to live without a long list of unnecessary things over the past three months--I am adding unwarranted apology to the list. We do what we can. Or in the case of Aperture Science, we do what we must because we can. 

A common comment from Seattle friends while we were visiting was, "I seems like all you guys do is eat food." Yeah. It doesn't just seem like that. But we are ever so slowly adding the part where we also grow what we eat. Just a little of it. An experimental handful of adzuki beans is sprouting in the cupboard. Brown rice, too. Beans and grains aren't typical fare, but who doesn't love science? 



Ving, our nine-year-old next door neighbor, watered the vegetable seeds while we were gone. His mom, Ruth, has a green thumb and a giant heart, so naturally we came home to this:


The seeds are now sprouts. Those enormous monsters on right: okra. No kidding. 

Speaking of monsters, we have created them with nothing but a simple bird feeder with wild bird seed in it. It seems kind of obvious once you say it aloud, but birds are absolute animals. We have concluded that the natural gentleness and timidity of birds and women are largely figments of a Victorian imagination. Either that, or edge-of-the-civilized-world desert beasts cannot be held to the standards to which the rest of society is held. Again, we return to the theme of unwarranted apology. 

In keeping with it, Ben and I stopped in Reno on Saturday to drop off family junk and heirlooms to my Auntie and Uncle. Uncle Tim is my mother's sixty-something-year-old baby brother. I have not seen them since my pregnant cousin's wedding (which was on my birthday last summer), where my other teetotalling Auntie tied one on (it was the champagne) and made all her teen-aged granddaughters get jiggy on the dance floor until... well, I have no idea because she was still at it when I left the reception. 

Oh, yes. Today's theme: Living joyfully and without unwarranted apology. To clarify, I am not talking about living without regard to the needs and feelings of others; I am talking about growing a set and not letting other people's expectations inhibit us from doing the things that make us feel alive, like disco dancing in the grocery store or traveling around the country in an old truck or stopping in the desert to ride an old bike and feed birds and plant a garden, however optimistically. In as much as "following one's bliss" impacts other people in a damaging way, apologies are warranted. Believe me, I've done my share of apologizing, both warranted and not. 

I was apprehensive about this tiny family reunion of three plus the new man, mostly because I am--for the next six days--still legally bound to the old one, whom they rather liked and who they were certain would never, nor could he, instigate the sort of life I have chosen now: driving off into an unknown future with a beautiful, bearded, wild man to find myself in love with him and the desert and growing sprouts and feeding crazy birds and obsessing about homesteading and trying everything that tickles my fancy. They worry, perhaps because my mother is gone and they feel a sort of cultural surrogate parent obligation to never let me starve to death or end up in prison or hell, where my mother would not be able to visit because she is in heaven. It's a lot of responsibility, this not wanting the people I love and who love me to worry about my future, my marital status, my finances, my standing in society. Introducing Ben to my family promised to be mildly awkward at best. 

My drunk-that-one-time-at-Jen's-wedding Auntie wrote to me recently, dismayed by the upheaval of my delicious life, telling me that she only wishes I could "settle down and find happiness." It was kind and loving and I hate to disappoint. I really, really hate it. And so another conversation begins. "Dear Auntie," it will start, "I am not sure if settling down and finding happiness have anything to do with one another, but I love you, and that makes me happy. And the life I choose every day is full and sweet, and what once felt like running away now feels like running toward."

And so we ran (read drove) toward  Auntie Grace and Uncle Tim in Reno, and an introduction and delicious dinner that could have been mildly awkward at best turned out to be just that: the best. My family was gracious and funny and curious and warm and all the best things I could have hoped for, despite the undercurrent of concern and befuddlement. 

I'm sure my aunties and uncles chatter like all families do. It feels weird to live outside the realm of people's expectations, and a little lonely when people you love think you're a bit out of your tree. And so I am, and I am learning to be an old desert lady about it, to love big and openly, and to not give a fuck where none should be given. Thank you, Karen, for teaching me a very important thing in the unlikely setting of a corporate hallway: What other people think about you is really none of your business. 



(And that's why we are drinking wine out of not-wine glasses and shooting airsoft guns indoors when we should be unpacking boxes and posting photos of it on the interwebs.)