Roots

I am often accused of being an elitist. I get it from all sides: my family sometimes (justifiably)questions my burning desire to abandon all the trappings of my childhood. My friends from my bartending years question my desire for a big house and a cushy car and 2 kids and a dog and a homemade pie in the oven. My husband questions my need for drama and pain and poetry and manic scribbling in leather journals I'll never show anyone. In short, I'm constantly seeking something.

I've touched on this before, when I wrote about my friend Vicki telling me I live in the superlative.

I digress.

I have never truly wanted to be away or different from any of the things I've listed above. I have always merely wanted to engage in the world and bring new facets of what I see around me into me. It's like trying to experience everything at one time...and because I so desire new experiences, I appear to always be leaving someone or something behind.

And that's okay. I am a collector of memories. On my deathbed, hopefully many many years from now, I hope to have a rich cache of memories that will distract me from my demise. I sometimes have panic attacks centered around the fact that I love my life so much, I want hundreds of years more to keep living it. I have been so blessed - due in large part to the folks who raised me.

There has always been a burning need inside me to get away from Dwight Mission Road in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. To get the hell out of the place where red clay punctuates farmland and streams are called "branches" and cows and chickens were my playmates. A place where we ground our own corn to make meal - shelled beans on the front porch - watched sunsets, chopped wood, didn't mind the silence. A place where my great grandmother slept with a pistol in her headboard to shoot men or coyotes that threatened her herd. It was a weird, and...I discover, a wonderful life. I miss it.

I NEVER thought I would.

But the stuff I'm made of, the stuff of gardens and prayers and independence and naiveté. The stuff of hell fire and brimstone. The stuff of skinned knees and endless fields of hay. The stuff of women. And babies. And muscadine grapes that I would hide under the vine and eat until my fingers were stained and my belly ached. That's the stuff I miss. And now, the older I get...it's the stuff I so desperately want to show my children.

The crux of the problem is this: the life my husband and I have carved out for ourselves is a life of theater and concrete and museums and art. It's such an amazing life. I cannot figure out how to return to what I was without abandoning what I have become. Because I couldn't have made it here without them, those naive, kind, simple, wonderful people...but I would never want to return for good. Call it elitist if you want, but I will continue collecting my memories.