Leaving Texas (Again)

Big Texas Rock

What with the imminent departure to Long Island, some five and a bit weeks away now, we're trying to see all the sights we feel sentimental about. For me, such a list has to include a visit to Enchanted Rock, a great mound of red granite the size of a small moon, parked out in the hills some 70 miles or so west of Austin.

Fortunately, Jesse wanted to visit the Rock, too, because, she insisted, she'd never seen it. I insisted that she had seen it, as recently as four years ago. We waited for a day when the academic load would be light and played hooky. We did not have to wait long. Towards the end of the year, Texas schools run their march of standardized tests, the tests that schools live and die by. Unable to field all the tests at the same time, the schools stagger the exams, cycling between the grades. That means while some kids have their heads down, supposedly saving their teachers' jobs, the other kids are out in the halls, creating the usual noisy distractions. In the mad scramble to scrape every point out of the examinees' meager stores of knowledge, the school arranges field trips to get the kids not being tested out of the school for the day. Some of these field trips are not well thought out. So on the day we called in sick and went to the rock, Jesse was supposed to go on a walking tour of the state of Texas' capitol, a building which she's seen a million times already, starting with the first visit in pre-kindergarten. Jesse would have rather spent a day at the doctor's than see that wretched place again.

The sick call made, breakfast obtained at Elsi's, a Salvadoran/Mexican hybrid we shall miss terribly once we're on Long Island, we got into the car and spent a couple of hours driving through the hill country. We listened to CDs Jesse had packed for the trip. I am now more familiar with Death Cab's oeuvre than I ever really wanted to be.


You don't need much in the way of hiking gear at Enchanted Rock. A truly fit person could be up and back down inside an hour. So I couldn't really overrule Jesse's choice of back-country jodhpur. Clearly, she was conceived during my brief career in the circus.

As we climbed the rock -- or rather, walked up it -- I thought about my half-crazy mum and the news of the H1N1 flu virus. Mother had called me the night before, just to let me know that we were all going to die. But there was still hope if we listened to her: "You can't let that child go to school tomorrow! You just can't. My momma said that in 1917 . . . "

And off she went, into a paranoid tirade that began with the flu and ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs, while taking in a detour at the Great Depression (always included in any conversation, free of charge). And besides, my mother added, Jesse's an only child. For a brief moment, I thought mother had heard something about singletons being particularly vulnerable to the virus. I know enough biochemistry to find such an idea preposterous, but I couldn't stop myself from asking the obvious question: "Mom,what does being an only child have to do with getting the flu?"

"Well, if you had two kids and one died, you'd still have one."

A chasm opened up at my feet. I've known for some time that I don't, really don't, understand my mother. And here was more evidence. If I had been blessed with two kids, I can't imagine that putting one of them in the ground would be any easier because I had a child remaining. For me, the grief would be indivisible and all consuming. It would empty my mind and vanquish my soul. In some ways, having just the one child would be easier, because I would be able to follow my despair down the drain, and not have to worry about the other child who still needed me.

But, hey, that's me. Of course, I can't be sure how I'd react if every parent's worst nightmare happened to me, but I can imagine this much: after an agony so intense I'd have all but gnawed off a limb to stop the pain, I might, might give a thought to my own sense of abandonment. Somehow, I have to forgive my mother for being the kind of parent for whom the abandonment is almost as terrifying as the loss itself.

Of course the move to Long Island means that Mother feels abandoned all over again, despite the fact that we'll fly her up from time to time and despite the fact that I have two siblings still living in central Texas. I've pretty much been her social secretary for 20 years now, managing where she (and formerly, she and my dad) spent the holidays, took ski vacations, and parked their motor home (and didn't I get sick of seeing that monstrosity parked in the driveway? the neighbors certainly got tired of it). The role of Mom's Social Organizer I now surrender to my siblings. I wish them well. They can comfort Mother by telling her that if I die in New York, as she is convinced will happen because global warming is going to drown Long Island some time next year, she'll still have them.

Or maybe I'm kidding myself that mere distance could ever really mean separation. For the second time in 53 years, I'm about to put more than 200 miles between myself and my mom and I don't really believe it's going to happen this time around. My parents made sure it was hard enough the first time, staging a spectacular crack-up in their marriage one week before my flight to London. I went anyway, hoping they'd grow up while I was gone. But they never quite grew up. And now there's just my reclusive mum left, determined to have no friends but her adult children. I wonder what disaster looms to keep me from leaving. The swine flu, maybe. Or perhaps mother will break a hip. "She better not, or I'll fly back to Texas and break her other hip," Mike said grumpily. He's lived alone for a year now, away from the family he loves and the house we built together. He's understandably short of sympathy for Mother's paranoias.

I hope Mike doesn't have to endure the separation much longer, but it's a foal-sized hope, teetering about on unsteady legs. Despite all the boxes we've packed and loaded, despite the months of effort selling our house and placating a heart-broken teenager, I still don't have a lot of faith that I'm really going to achieve what is a simple fact for millions of adults: living in a different timezone from Mom.

Freewheeling Past the Graveyard

(My favorite film critic these days is the very wonderful Mark Kermode, who provides weekly radio commentary which the BBC (Auntie Beeb) kindly provides to deadbeats like me around the world. From Kermode, I have relearned a very useful and British expression. Forgive the liberal use of it in this post. It's a word my family encourages because it's printable and they feel I need to move on from former life as a sailor.)

Anyway, my Friday started well. I had my plans for the day, well, planned. I'd go pick up a heart monitor at Freewheeling Bikes; then I'd head back to the "Wee Flat Across from My Old House" and once there put some beef tips on the stove for the evening pasta. Then I'd work on my blog. Then I'd pick up the kid, then I'd knit a bit while watching polygamous Mormons on Big Love (I'd do anything -- anything but move to Utah -- to have fantasy neighbors like these living across the street!). After that, I'd play Scramble, this mind-suckingly addictive game on my IPhone. For an hour tops. Really. Just one hour.

Well, I did make it to Freewheeling. And they did have the Sigma chest strap I'd ordered (don't buy Polar heart monitors; they're pants.) I'd not been in the shop but a minute when in walked the new owners of my old house. The male half, William, is an avid cyclist and he was apparently picking up gear. He was also meeting, for the first time, the female half of a couple who once owned Freewheeling (she still runs the place), and who, once upon a time, also owned the very house that I just sold, that William and his wife just bought.

So, three different parties, same interest in bikes, same house. Nope, none of us heard of the house through mutual cycling friends or even knew each other existed. And not only is there the spooky bike connection, there is also the spooky ethnic connection. My husband is a British ex-pat, and William is a British ex-pat. And as soon as Ms Freewheeling opened her mouth, I had a pretty good idea that she, too, was from the land of great beer (Belgian beer, and all lager in fact, is total pants). And it turned out, upon questioning, that she was from, you guessed it, England. More exactly, she's from Suffolk, a fine county, flattish and good for cycling.

Happy occasion you'd think, no? But I had to suppress a few tears and quell a sense of dread. The tears came from just realizing again that I can't go home. And the dread came from a sense of being over-burdened by convergences. You see, not long after the Freewheeling couple moved away from my beloved old house, the house to which they'd added a fine garden dining room and a meditation loft we used for a kid-space, Frank, the male half of the couple, died of cancer. That's some dozen years ago, now.

We all know I don't believe in signs or portents or any mystical thing. What gripped my heart on this occasion was simple dread. How capricious a universe it must be to send me to a store at just the moment in time where I'd run into the past and present owners of the house I'm trying not to miss. It felt like lightning striking.

And doesn't it always strike twice? Is this just a prologue for the next strike? These occasional jolts of dread, this anxiety that lightning is always just biding its time, gathering itself into a mighty ball, will it ever go away? I realize I should take great confidence from the fact that my prognosis is good, that I have a 95% chance of not having my cancer recur. But, hey, I had a 90% chance of not getting cancer in the first place, but here I am. Numbers aren't quite the comfort they once were.

So I came back to the Wee Flat and rat-holed. I tinkered with my laptop for hours for no good purpose. It appears I can have DVD playback or non-jerky ITunes downloads, but not both. Or I can take the damn laptop to the shop after all. This conclusion should not have taken me hours to come to. Of course, I wasn't just tinkering while I tried one software module after another. Oh, no. During every gap of ten seconds or more, I played Scramble again and again, my score dropping with every round. I had to recharge my IPhone three times.

I can't handle the game and I can't leave it alone. And my highest score is complete pants.

Bad Mothers Unite

This photograph really doesn't do the whole ensemble justice. If I were a better photographer, you'd see that the 'leggings' are blue jeans, and the skirt a cheerleader's rah-rah skirt. No, the skirt's grassy green color does not somehow bring the whole thing together. She bought the skirt in Good Will last Halloween, and believe me, it's world-class scary.

The shocking thing is not the fact that I let my kid wear this outfit to school today. No, the shocking thing is that I hadn't even noticed what she was wearing until she'd already emerged from her shower, had had her breakfast, had gotten into the car, been driven to school, and was stepping out on to the school steps. Then, my eyelids peeled back enough for me to see it, the skirt, the jeans, the matelot with chain-gang stripes. It makes me shudder to think of the day when she might decide that Victoria's Secret is acceptable outerwear. With any luck, she'll have two parents by then and between us we'll make one competent observer.

My kid is the occasion for much startlement these days. I vaguely noticed last summer that she was entering the disillusionment phase, that period of adolescence when a formerly sweet and compliant kid suddenly looks around and wonders how she got stuck with the original 50 Foot Losers. Things seemed to improve in the autumn and a bit in the spring, when I was going through surgery and radiation. She may be a teen, but there is a compassionate soul in there and for a time she definitely eased off on her preferred pose of numb indifference. After all, Mommy and Daddy were on the edge of utterly falling apart. We needed her and she came through.

But now that we may all cling to the hope that my position on the Cancer Bus is well towards the back, at least two of us are returning to our assigned roles. And her role is definitely the classic teen: resentful and sulky and prone to mysterious smiles that when queried are about 'oh, nothing'. My role is the needy and self-doubting mom, who feels like a jilted lover because her kid has grown up and would clearly rather spend ten hours with friends on Facebook than ten minutes in Starbucks with her Joan Crawford of a mother.

I wish us both luck in stepping out of our assigned boxes.

Meanwhile, for comfort, I turn to cycling, dog walking and research into the ideal kitchen range. Cycling has been fun and my recovery continues. Dog maintenance unfortunately involves keeping Jesse's dog, Ziggy, trimmed. He's a Shih-tzu, which means that were I to neglect him, his hair would grow until it reached Tibet, the land where his breed supposedly came from. The trimming has naturally fell on me. After two years of acting as Ziggy's private beautician, I can honestly say that I'm only faster at the job, not better. He frankly looks like hell.

On the appliance consulting, I may fare somewhat better. As you may recall, there was a family feud, gentle but high-stakes, over what house to buy in New York. It was a happy feud, in a way. We were fortunate to be looking at houses that, while they may not achieve Dream Home status, are certainly nice enough, nothing to complain about, not in this era. But a feud there was. And I lost. Oh, I wasn't completely over-ruled. There wasn't a head-butting fight. It was a case of the winning team making good arguments, sufficient for the losing team to concede the field.

Now, a kitchen is not the only thing I look for in a home. But this was to be my dream home, my compensation for leaving Austin, so the precise nature and character of the kitchen figured pretty largely in my mind. And don't I deserve good tools? I'm the sole cook in the family and it's a job I have something of a passion for, so I was looking forward to at long last having a kitchen like the pages in a magazine. Here's the kitchen in the (cheaper) house I wanted us to buy.

The Drool Kitchen:


And this is the kitchen I got (Kitchen X):

Mike, an agreeable fellow, has approved spending whatever it takes to turn Kitchen X into the Drool Kitchen, but I can tell he doesn't really mean that. Because that would mean taking out the offendingly neutral cabinets and replacing them with something, well, cottagey feeling, with old fashioned inset framing and display cases and a plate rack, not to mention knobs that cost more than $2.00 at Home Depot. It's best not to even think about what I'd like to do and just concentrate on what I can do.

The builder, thankfully, hadn't ordered appliances yet so the first job is to decide on a range. You'd think it would be easy because I know I want gas, I know I want a free-standing range and I know what my minimum BTU requirements are. I also know I want something that looks good (thus sadly ruling out everything recommended by Consumer Dowdy Reports).

But knowing what I want hasn't helped much. I've fallen in love and out of love with several different ranges. Just as soon as I would gain some confidence that a particular cooker was sturdy and reliable and performs well, I'd come across a legion of unhappy purchasers, yakking away on the web (when do these people actually cook anything?). Their machines were busted and the service centers were staffed by the Sons of Darkness. After rejecting Thermador, Viking, the Kitchen Aid and Dacor, I started wondering what was so wrong, really, with just a brick oven behind the garage and a propane grill in the driveway? Hell, what's wrong with just a tent in the yard? We could rent out the house and turn a profit!

But fantasies of escape aside, I have to have a range (and I should admit I was never in much danger of shelling out for one of the really pricey brands). After many hours of tracking down rumors and reading reviews, I think I've narrowed the choice of range down to a Bluestar or an American Range.

And let's be honest, I've fallen again. This time for the Bluestar. I use a wok for everything that needs real heat, whether it's the onions you brown for a curry or the roux you blacken for a gumbo. The concentrated heat makes the flour brown more quickly and the curved surface makes it easy --and safe -- to whisk the roux, that lethal stuff known as "Cajun Napalm". The Bluestar's grate cradles a wok beautifully, concentrating the flame right on the pot's surface.

And if it weren't for a few but very noisy unhappy Bluestar customers on the web, I probably wouldn't be considering the American Range. But it has a solid pedigree, has almost no complaints on the web, and is the product of a company that has built commercial ranges in this country for decades. People who say they know something about steel insist that the American Range is built with much higher quality steel, and so will last forever. I'd be wholly suckered into this claim if the AR company offered a five year warranty, but since they don't, I'm suspicious.

So I'm looking forward to the hands-on research. I'll have to find a showroom that will let me cook on both machines. Soon, I hope, I will file my report from the frontlines.

The Anchor's on board and the cable's all stored

The Big Day came. The movers arrived around 8.30: some six or seven guys, some burly as hell, some sinewy bantam-weights. What do you do in such a situation? I thought the answer obvious: you run up to Krispy Kreme and buy a butt-load of doughnuts and many pony kegs of coffee. My only regret is that KK didn’t have a call-in service to get the ball rolling while I was in transit. I had to stand around for 20 minutes while they poured one keg after another.

I brought the haul back, worried that I would be tempting a diabetic mover into a coma. It hadn’t even occurred to me to get healthy choices. However, these didn’t seem like the kind of guys who would have eaten a granola bar. And too right. The KKs were delicious. I restricted myself to just one.

While the movers moved stuff into the two vans they had driven up (Mike watching every box of precious science fiction books like a mother hen), I gathered up kitchen items, bedding, all the basics you need in an apartment, and walked them across the street to our rental. Really, we have been truly blessed as far as logistics are concerned. The rental is right across from my daughter’s best friend’s house. They can gaze longingly at each others’ windows when homework and other obligations prevent them from getting together.

But as the day progressed, a black cloud loomed: the final, parting moment. The buyers’ agent called, saying that she wanted us at the house for the final walk-through. Post move-out walk-throughs are a good idea, of course. Owners have been known to leave their trash behind, or replace the nice chandeliers that the buyers thought they were getting with Home Depot tat, or even replace spa-tubs with ‘garden tubs’ on their way out. To new lives with no forwarding address.

We ourselves were burned, years ago, upon buying a house in Wales. The lot was so beautiful, the view of the Brecon Beacons exquisite, so how could anything go wrong? The former owner, the local school’s headmaster, was, we later found out, famous for his frat-boy hygiene. Every local knew the story of how his wife had dumped him, just to free herself from having to clean up after him. He did to us what he couldn't do to her, leaving great piles of broken windows and other builder’s debris all along the side of the house. It was hell to dispose of. So, take my advice: never close on a house without a final review of the property.

But I’d never heard of having the sellers present at a final walk through. “Not a good idea,” said a little voice in my head. But I assented, anyway. We certainly weren’t replacing fixtures or ripping the wiring out of the walls. We had nothing to hide. And surely, surely, we’d have our emotions in check.

Jesse came home, and with a look of deep dissatisfaction, sat on the tailgate of our truck, across the street from the house that was almost no longer hers. She watched, somber as an executioner, as the movers hauled her life away.

When the last stack of book boxes was rolled onto the truck, when the doughnuts were all gone and the coffee-kegs empty, the Lead Burly Guy met with me at the kitchen counter. I was to sign form after form, agreeing to his description of the inventory. “I’m an ex-marine,” he said. I wasn’t so wrecked that I couldn’t see the sense of humor in his eyes. He wasn’t really twisting my arm. It was a good thing I felt like trusting him, because I was in no mood to read the pages he kept putting in front of me.

As I signed, I fought back tears, sniffling as if I had allergies. This was the Final Thing. I’m done. It’s over.

I scrawled my signature on the last page and ran from the house, now bawling my head off. Even in this state, I couldn’t resist stopping on the lawn, to pick up a stray piece of trash on my beloved home’s grass. I hate it, hate it, when you want to cry so badly, you have to plant a hand across your mouth, hoping that suffocation will put and end to the sobs and maybe you, too. I made it to the apartment, glad to draw breath and just cry for awhile.

Mike was already resigned to being point-man on this ill-advised, owner-assisted final walk-through. An hour or so later and he came back home. He had not been completely tear free, himself. The new owners were exceedingly pleasant. Which is good because I expect that at times our friends will forget we’re not there and will just show up show up, wanting to talk movies, politics, and to drink wine. And the male half of the couple is another British ex-pat! So the law of Conservation of the British is still being observed by the universe.

The day ended with one of those acts of kindness that make you glad to be alive, even on a day like this one. Neighbors, the parents of Jesse’s best friend, threw together an impromptu but delightful meal of bistro potatoes, steak, salad. We were too tired to even get in the car, but we needed to re-fuel.

And while we ate, I could admire my friends' high performing kitchen and take notes. Poor Mike. The enhancements I have in mind for Shoe String Harbor are really going to cost him. Since we’ll be eating in more, I tell him, it’ll be worth it. The options for restaurant dining are kind of limited in our part of Long Island. Mostly, the restaurants are very high-end places where the mark-up isn’t justified by the standard of cooking. There are Italian family diners, and the cooking in these can be quite good, but there’s a sameyness about them. We'll be eating in a fair bit more.

Since the move, ten days ago now, Jesse and I have been making our nest in our neighbor’s apartment, wishing Mike was with us. The dogs are confused. But at least Roxie, our no-nonsense Sheltie, has stopped hopping the apartment’s fence. At first, she kept going back to her old house, to bark at the strangers she could see setting foot on her former lawn. A true sheep-dog, it is her good opinion that all disorder is the Devil’s work. But we’ve moved, so she’s moved, and is content in the squirrel-rich environment of the rental’s back yard.

I was worried that Jesse was never crying over, or even talking about, the dreadful loss of home and home town. But finally she did cry, where I couldn’t see here, though she reported it. The new owners had taken down the ivy that lined the wall outside her bedroom. She remembered all the times that she and her best friend had made rings of dried grasses, and had buried the rings inside the vines. I have no idea why did this. Hey, they’re only kids! But that vine apparently meant “home” to her. It’s a shame the new house has a hardi-plank exterior: not a good foundation for vines of any kind.

In the meantime, I am re-learning what it’s like to go to the laundromat. I was hoping that the high-tech Spin Cycle near the University of Texas campus would have machines you could just swipe with a credit card, but sadly, you still have to fiddle with quarters and bill changers. This can be involved, because the minimum price for a large load is $4.25! You’ve got to really want a clean bed-spread.

The good news about the modern coin-op: free wi-fi! And quite a necessity this has become, thanks to my One Great Mistake in this whole moving process. I had originally booked a cable drop for the apartment. Then -- this is sooooo typical of me -- I started regretting the $120 installation fee almost as soon as I put the phone back on its cradle. I mulled over Time Warner’s highway robbery for several days before deciding I had the time to research an alternative. AT&T’s DSL service would, I discovered, be far cheaper to have and to install. So I cancelled Time Warner ahead of the install and started up the DSL service. Unfortunately, this meant we’d have to wait two days for AT&T to provision the already existing drop (ridiculous, but at the $30 install price, I was willing to be understanding).

But I managed, somehow, to give AT&T the wrong address. Upon discovering the error -- the modem arrived at my neighbor’s address -- I frantically called AT&T, to change the address. But a new address means a new order. And another five days, making a total of seven, seven days, that’s a whole week, without that Interwebs Thingy. And, of course, on provisioning day, I spent hours on the phone with technical support. Apologies were made. Trouble tickets were raised. And I still don't have an internet connection.

So not only am I rediscovering life before on-site laundry machines, I’m also rediscovering life before the Big Connecto. And it sucks!!!!! I probably sit down to my lap top five times a day, wanting to browse oven choices or find out the name of Heath Ledger’s last masseuse, only to find my Dell dead and un-talking, save the helpful little alerts it shoots up to inform me that it can’t reach the internet. I KNOW THAT. I feel like civilization has abandoned me, leaving me cold in my loincloth, rubbing two sticks together.

I may have to take a bed-roll to Starbuck’s.