back to the beginning

Moving. Back to the country after more than twenty years of mostly avoiding it. As an adolescent and teenager, I and my several siblings and mother had all felt stranded in the country. We lived a mile from the nearest convenience store, twenty miles from school and church. We could never walk or bike to our friends' houses. My socially adept mother's gift of gab was wasted on a house full of resentful children.

I have spent my adult life in towns and cities, have never had a driver's license. I have to get one now, in my mid-thirties, so I won't be stranded far from town. But don't I want to be stranded, away from the things of man? Isn't that really what this decision is about?

I watched J plunge the overflow for the septic tank for half an hour yesterday, and the water from just one load of laundry still wouldn't budge. It poured out the top of the pipe and oozed into the surrounding mud, finding its way into the dug-out basement. The basement smells of the dampest things.

Later, we struggled to lift the toilet off of the insecure platform from which it wobbled. I had leaned against the tank briefly while cleaning that room and the whole thing lifted off the floor. Wasn't expecting that. Missing bolts and rings. We had to pull it out and set it on top of some cardboard in the bathtub. As we hunched over the floor plumbing, determining sizes of parts we needed, J tapped a plastic ring to show where the problem was and sent a shower of definitely unclean moisture spattering over my bare leg.

One day we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.

We came back to this house, in town, where we're still living for the next week. Everything is different. I hear a car zip past every few seconds. I feel the presence of people as an invisible weight all around me. All their grief and confusion and need. My own grief feels heavier here, and I can't release it through the labor of my hands.

Two nights ago we built a fire in our new front yard. We sat there, watching it, saying little. Moment by moment I could feel the anxiety leaving me, like a candle melting. The red wax ran from my chest to the earth around me, which so easily absorbs everything.