The trip home Part II After spending Friday and Saturday nights at Erin’s, we trekked about an hour to my mom’s to say hi to my grandma and help my mom with some interior design stuff, then go to my sister’s housewarming party. (This is the busiest weekend I’ve had in ages. Friday, the so called “bead show,” but it was really a jewelry show. Lots and lots to see and buy. And the people weren’t mean at all. Story to come in a later post. Saturday, Erin and I went to a wine festival and bought several bottles. Yum. Sunday, my sister’s party and Monday – berry picking, then Da Vinci Code viewing.) On the way to my mom’s, I enjoyed the mountain scenery. It looks pretty much like this: (Click on it to view it bigger. I wanted to post a larger version, but it's too wide and runs into the sidebar.) I didn’t appreciate it much when I was growing up. I was too busy wishing myself older and waiting to get out of there. I spent my teens wanting to get out, my twenties running from that town and now my second year into my thirties, I’m starting to wonder what I was running from. I like to think I was running toward something, like education. But I know I was also running from a few things too. My parents were really young when they had me and weren’t adults yet. Hell, I’m just now starting to feel like an adult. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be my age and have a 12-year-old. But as a 12-year-old, I knew the path my parents had taken was the one of the hardest ones in life. When I was that age, they were already divorced and my mom was working full time and raising my sister and me by herself. My dad was around of course, but the day-to-day stuff was always handled by mom. I recognized that wasn’t a course I wanted my life to take so I studied, determined I wasn’t going to hang around that town and have that kind of life. In the words of George Bailey, I was going to shake the dust from that crummy little town off my feet and I was going to see the world. (I’ve seen some of the world, but not much. Yet. I’ll get there though.) So when I go back home, I always feel a mix of this stuff, remember things from my childhood, feel a little weird being there. I asked Erin if she feels weird when she goes back home to Connecticut. As I stood there grasping for the right words, she said “Like you don’t belong there anymore?” And yes, that’s it. In a way. But there’s other stuff, too. There’s a curvy mountain road on the way to mom’s. There’s a house up there that I always loved and vowed that I would have a house like that someday. Big and beautiful with floors that didn’t slant and with air conditioning and with heat that didn’t come from a wood stove. (I’m pretty sure that’s why I hate matches and fire.) As I drove along that road Sunday, I wanted to take a photo of that house as I passed it. I turned on the camera, which was flashing its low battery light at me. Of course. I’d bought batteries but hadn’t put them in yet. I kept thinking the house was just around the next corner and that the old batteries would hold out. Finally, it died. So I got out the new pack, took the old ones out of the camera (while driving. Eek). Before I got the new ones in and shut the battery door, I’d just passed the house. I wouldn’t have gotten a good shot anyway because of all the trees surrounding it. But after I saw it, it occurred to me that my house is similar to that house. They’re both wood sided. Mine isn’t nearly as big and grand, but it does have central heat and air, two bathrooms, a dishwasher, garbage disposal, cable tv and computer. All things I grew up without. The non-negotiable on that list when we were looking for a house was the air conditioning. I swore I would never again live without it. Maybe some of that sounds rather material of me and I don’t mean it that way. It’s just that when you grow up with very little, there’s a game you play with yourself, I think. The “Prove it to yourself” game. You know the saying about people wanting to keep up with the Joneses? I don’t care about the Joneses. It’s myself I worry about impressing. Like I have to prove to myself that I’m a success, which I’m pretty sure is why I went through the “I want a BMW” phase. Do I need that? Of course not. Then we looked at bigger houses. But we don’t need that either. The attitude that I don’t need that stuff is new to my thirties. David and I put ourselves through college and have worked on our finances so that we don’t have to struggle (very often anyway) to make ends meet. So I don’t want to compromise that for a lot of crap we’d have to spend money on. So Joneses, just in case you thought I was trying to keep up with you, I’m backing down. And self, take notice. I’m going to stop running from who I was and how I grew up and just accept it. And maybe in time I’ll even be able to embrace it instead of feeling hindered and held back by it. I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family. So what. That’s the hand I was dealt and I think I’ve been playing that hand pretty damned well. If I do say so myself. And in this case, I’m really the only one who matters.