Old habits die hard when you've got a sentimental heart

Listening: She & Him, "Sentimental Heart"

After a few failed tries at syncing our busy schedules, I finally got to meet Mister Abe. I met Lori and the Boy at the Tin Shed for brunch this past Sunday. While we had to wait for about an hour in a chilly morning to be seated, we finally got a table and settled into scrambles, grits and biscuits. I got to see a lot of his personality while we waited in the form of some of those delightful faces only babies can make (and this baby takes the whole cake) and his changing moods. A sleepy face gave way to half smiles and determination to squirm out of arms.

This was exactly what I needed, a smiling and hilarious baby. This amazing creature (Lori and Ted know they've hit the jackpot with this kiddo) reminded me of the goodness in this world, the happiness and glowing warmth that exists. What Lori didn't know going into this breakfast date (or even leaving it) was that my family suffered a tragic death this past week. The death alone is enough to cast a wide gray cloud over anyone, but the nature of it suppressed any smiles and joy we had left. I've been conflicted and confused in my grief, but I will say that seeing that slight dimple in the Boy's left cheek brightened me for days and days.

Lori and I talked a lot through our two hours together (a boy needs his sleep in his mama's lap, after all) about community and how that community can become your family. This past week for me has been frustrating in addition to being grievous. I immediately looked for plane tickets to go to Mississippi and was constantly on the phone with K$, trying to figure out a million different travel plans. Time and cost ended up hindering my attempts to get to Jackson, to embrace my parents and help where I can. It has been so infuriating to be so far away and feel helpless about the entire situation. I don't know how to handle this grief really. What I needed was my family, to see their faces. My friends here have asked what I need, offering to take me out for drinks (and my housemates cried with me over a 6-pack of Mothership Wit), hug me, love me.

When I've needed to be with my family most, I realize that some of that family is here. They are here and I need them. They are willing and able to hold me up and for that, I am truthfully and wholly thankful. This brings me back to sitting with Lori and Abe. The image is burned in my mind of a slack-mouthed baby boy sleeping soundly against his mother's form. It was enough to remind me how family grows just as theirs did, a mother and a father gaining a son, a son gaining parents. It reminded me of how family evolves, how the meaning of "family" changes over time. My heart, in its shroud of grief and conflict right now, is glad to remember that.

I rest my head on a pillowy star and a cracked-door moon that says I haven't gone too far

Listening: Wilco, "Via Chicago" (Thanks, Jeff Tweedy, for the subject title)


I'm still stuck on the ideas of "home" and returning South after being way up here in the Pacific Northwest and what all of this means, etc. So, bear with me, it's what I'll be writing about quite a bit with breaks in between to review things like The Mountains Goats' Heretic Pride (waaaaaaaay overdue), The Master Butchers Singing Club, talk about new projects like the review writing exchange. There won't always be such heavy talk here.

When I left Mississippi I knew in my heart of hearts (what does that expression mean anyway?) that I was doing exactly the right thing at the exact right moment in my life to pick up and move so far away. I needed space and time to sort my thoughts, to start my life again after surviving a broken heart, to challenge myself. I've always been at ease in social situations, but the thought of starting all over again, building community in a place I'd never been (truth be told now: I'd never set a foot in Portland, Oregon, before I arrived here last January) truly frightened me and in the outcome, made me more self-aware and confident.

Fast forwarding through the last year+, I've managed to gather some kind of surrogate and wonder family. After a hiccup of a try at living with my landlord, I moved into a yellow house with two soon-to-be great friends. I found a home with them: community dinners, dancing in the kitchen, having kitty friends and learning to chase chickens. I've spent time with this amazing lady (and her equally amazing and hilarious husband) and will be fortunate to meet their son, for whom they've fought so hard these past few months. I found something of a soulmate (as much as I don't know what I think about such things, I do think that souls recognize each other, a la Plato, but that's another entry altogether) in a lady who moved here when I did, independently of me. She has become a favorite fixture in my life and it will surely shatter my heart the day I leave her here. I found a job I really love and has helped me learn more about what my life's work will be. I made great friends at that job, exploring the city's many happy hours through laughter and sharing of lives with them.

And now I am choosing to leave this all behind.

I knew when I moved to Portland that it would be a tenuous existence and that something else would propel me forward again. For all the reasons I could move back to Mississippi (admirers, Eudora Welty, my family, the way the Delta feels to my skin, 930), there are a million reasons why I cannot and should not right now. I have more to find out about this great big world and as a child I'd dream of seeing what else is out there. I know that I need to be back in the South, if for nothing else than to get a refill on the hopes and dreams that only Southern air can inspire. I hope that a stay in Austin will soothe my need to know about living in Texas, the romanticized version inspired in my childhood by reading and watching Lonesome Dove. My next stop will be North Carolina to see if I can wrangle a teaching job in Charlotte, where two of my other life's loves live currently. Maybe one day Mississippi will be in the cards for me. I will spend time with M&P, pay visits to gravesites, bask in sunshine and then say goodbye. I think right now it would take something catastrophic to get me to plant my feet back there. I have a lot of love and fierce adoration in my heart for the Ssip, but there's more out there. There will be a lot of travel and moving and shifting in the next six or so months, but it comes down to this:

Some people find stability in staying in one place for decades, content with stasis. Today, my stability comes in the form of momentum, changing my orbit, always moving forward even with a few steps back.

The Way We Get By

Tomorrow evening, K$ will arrive in Portland. I have missed my sister in a million different ways since I left Jackson (and then she returned to Jackson after graciously tagging along on the Road Trip of the Century) last December. I think about what it will be like for her to be here, my temporary home. I think about if she'll like the things I like about Portland. I wonder if she'll fall in love with it like I did or have her own affair with this magical rainy place. I will show her every wonder I've discovered and hope that she'll have secrets of her own, bridges she adores or neighborhoods that she'll wonder about living in.

I think about leaving this place to return South soon. I will miss so many pieces of it--the strangely named parks (I live half a mile from Unthank Park), seeing toys chained to the old rings used to anchor horses, the sweaty Soul night at Rotture, my daily bus/MAX commute downtown and all of the characters that accompany that trip, seeing Mount St. Helens from my 9th floor office.

The piece I will miss most is the family I have gathered here. I finally found a semblance of home in a person that is not my given family and she will stay here for the foreseeable future. It really is nearly unbearable to think about leaving a piece of your soul or some other intangible organ behind you in your wake. My blood screams to return to the South, to douse my skin in humidity and heat again, but my heart will break.

home.

And I'm still chasing it. I need a place to hang my proverbial hat. A place, a place where I don't feel the stranger and feel the need to change drastically so that I might finally be genuinely and wholly happy here. I've found some semblance of happiness and I think being in Portland has helped me get there, but it's not Portland that made it. I think it was more along the lines of "not the destination, but the journey" idea.

So now I'm going to prepare to scream and push my way back.Really it will be a gliding ride to the homeland. For all of the faults the South carries, at least they make better biscuits there than what I had Saturday morning!

Can you chase me till you my feet touch the ground and go dancing?

i sit here sunburned and exhausted from a weekend enjoying sunshine and the bit of heat we've finally gotten in portland. my mamaw in mississippi is convinced we're suffering from the 100+ degree heat in various other parts of the West, but i think i've finally explained that we're not quite in that pocket. this weekend saw our determination to continue bringing Mississippi to portland (i do live with 2 fellow mississippians after all and half of my friends here are the same) when we deposited an inflated kiddie pool (that could easily fit 6 or so adults comfortably) in our front yard. we forgot that the water from the hose would be freezing cold, so i'm sure it was a hilarious sight for our neighbors to see 4 screeching adults attempting to sit in 2 and a half feet of frigid water. today we ventured to the oregon coast where we traded our swimsuits of yesterday for hoodies to fight against the cutting wind. in the end, i still had sunburn on top of my sunburn.

all of this talk of fusing mississippi with oregon has mainly stemmed from finishing (for the 4th time) Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King. miss king's observances of the southern "lady" and the many versions she has taken on are curiously hysterical and somewhat familiar. a section of the book deals with explorations of her sexuality in a conservative South and her remembrance of certain social constructions she must never forget. after reading this and many lengthy conversations with Mamaw, i have been inspired to embrace certain aspects of my southern womanhood that have been long forgotten. i think it will be a possibly frustrating and hopefully enlightening process for me in my journey back to the South i love.

speaking of florence king, i should also mention here that tomorrow is the day that my sister (the kind soul who introduced me to miss king), fondly known as K$, entered this world. she preceded me by 5 years and i never let her forget it. tomorrow i will be on the road toward the High Desert for a work retreat, so i won't be able to gush over her on her appropriate day and i'd like to let the world of blogging know how much i appreciate my sister. i've included a photo of us taken when i visited MS over Memorial Day weekend. we are pink cheeked and glassy-eyed, glistening from the humid bar where we sung our hearts out and about for friends and strangers.

this lady has endured almost 26 years of my own existence (and endurance it was...i was an awful child) and has overlooked my many flaws to become my best friend. she gladly came along on my 3000 mile trek toward new freedoms in portland and helped me laugh through a potentially impossible situation involving a broken window and some broken english. she has been on her own journey to dreams and identity and will be leaving jackson as well for the hotter and hipper grounds of Austin, Texas. in two weeks she will begin a new life and a new job all on her own and i can't say enough how proud i am of all the amazing things she has done in her life.

k$, i'm thrilled to know you as a friend and i'm sure as hell grateful you're my sister.

a toast to you on your 31 years.