Today I ran away from home for a couple of hours. I couldn’t take those people I live with any more. Truth be told, they were probably glad to be rid of me too. Almost three months ago we left Massachusetts for New Mexico, almost three months of undiluted togetherness. I’m a person who’s used to getting out: to work, to guild meetings, to writers’ groups, to networking nights. Not that I haven’t met anyone here in Albuquerque, but the going’s been slow. Or I’m impatient.
Okay, I know I’m impatient. We haven’t even been in this house a month. I’ve found area hookers; tomorrow’s my second guild meeting with them. I’ve already managed to participate in their monthly demo at the local botanical garden. A potluck with the neighbors Sunday provided info on a couple of organizations to join. And I’m gearing up for a job search. Things are actually coming together.
The reality is that I want need to take advantage of the downtime. To write, to sketch, to plan my next chapter. The past few years have been rough what with my mother-in-law succumbing to Alzheimer’s, planning this year’s move, and my kid’s bipolar issues. Concentration has often eluded me. Life being short and all, I have to remedy that.
So, at Julia Cameron’s urging, I escaped took an artist’s date. Old Town Albuquerque is filled with all things…old and artsy in a southwesterly way. Okay, and touristy too. Because I’m finishing up some packages to send back home to family and friends, touristy was what I needed. Day of the Dead here I come!
I poked here and wandered there. First up was San Felipe Church; it was established in 1706, though the current church dates from 1793! I picked up a pottery cross to send back to my boss at Saint Blaise in Massachusetts. A tourist trap provided maracas – perfect for two little girls with fall birthdays. Dream catchers too because I just love that idea, and because I suffer from hot flashes and insomnia, I appreciate catching all the good dreams one can. After that I investigated a little home goods-type shop that provided some good inspiration for rug-making.
Fortunately, I’d found free parking near the art museum (a place I’m teasing myself with, waiting to visit till winter). On my way back, wending my way through a corner of the front garden, I revisited the statuary I’d seen when I vacationed here two summers ago. How could I stay cranky after seeing these two happy bears? I couldn’t. I was glad I’d gotten out, done something on my own. Even better, tomorrow I’ll head off to lunch and a guild meeting with new friends. It doesn’t get better than that.
Is your retired husband always home? Your kids? Sure, we love them, but how do you keep your own “space,” your soul time? Be honest, do you run away from home too?
To be honest? Mendicant that I am I have always run away – continent to continent. Sometimes I take my people with me, sometimes I run alone. Now we have come home to South Africa and here I am – both kids left home (one to the fucking tundras of Canada – whom I have not seen for four years. My throat closes when I think too much of her. I love her independence. I understand it. But that does not stop me from sulking sometimes – graciously, mind, but sulking nevertheless. How can she leave me so completely? I was a good mother. I think. Was it that excellence that gave her wings? Probably. I slept on airport floors with that child – in strange places, her little head on my shoulder, her sisters head on the other, my rucksack as a pillow for us. I showed her there is always so much more than….what? Than home? Probably. So, yes, I admire her courage and her commitment to this leaving – but still. I sulk at times.)
The other is away at University. She wanders home from time to time. Irreverent and slightly mad, she delights me with her presence. I recognise so much of myself in her, too. She will leave. At the en of this year she flies to her sister. She has a return ticket but she tells me she may just stay. For a while. And that is good. No doubt, I shall sulk a little about that, too – even as I glory in her moving, searching, curious soul.
And silently make my own plans to do it myself. Again.
My bushboy is now a small-holding boy – working from his old stone shed every day from where he says he cannot hear me if I call. He probably doesn’t. I don’t blame him his selective deafness….we have spent so many years apart that being so close all the time wearies him as it does me – at times.
Some mornings I sit on my veranda and see him over theeeeeeere, way up on the hill, under a huge old wild fig and I can see how restless he is.
I feel it. Wave after wave. Because I am restless, too.
We’re trying to be proper grown-ups, the bushboy and I. We’re trying to stay put – to grow some roots. But they stretch out across the world so. And they pull at one so.
These days, proper grown-up in the making that I try to be, I run away in reading, in my colours on a canvas. I have holed up. I seldom go anywhere. I moan when I have to visit people. I bitch when I am required to be sociable. I usually get into the swing of it when I do go places and find joy in it, but it becomes so much of an effort to make myself do it.
Perhaps I am only gathering my energies. Perhaps I am silently, sometimes sulking, always restless, gathering my energies again.
Oh, my (twin) friend, this is a blog entry itself. Only I wish I was as eloquent as you. 🙂 First of all, you raised them to see the world. They’re doing that. Go visit them. Second, I hear you about wanting to leave, to explore more, but having no patience with the actual process of getting to where you want to go. The planning required now exhausts me. That doesn’t even include the ass-pain of flying. Hell, I find it a bitch to put on what little make-up I wear in public, let alone “real” clothes. Perhaps it’s a phase. I hope so. I need to see more of this world. Standing still isn’t an option physically or mentally. I’d like to visit Africa. If I can find a job and make enough money for that. 🙂 And you know you’re always welcome here, Kerry-lyn. Wild women in the wild west…
Hey Twin – my home is always here to you – wherever that may well be. For the next few years it will be here….I am sure. Should you ever summons the energy and / or the lucre, it would be utterly fantastic to show you my world.
I am visiting the almost-Canadian in December this year. She’s getting married on the 19th December – a truly bloody Canadian Winter Wedding. I just know my hair is going to snap off from the cold.
And should I get the gap (and the energy) I shall descend upon your world….if nothing else I want to see that magnificent front door of yours with my real eyes…and you!
I get you about the “real” clothes and make-up…..these days I appal myself by just shooting into town wearing whatever it is I happen to have pulled on having heaved myself out of bed. I tell myself my tie-dyed leggings are way cool and no-one else will have shoes quite like mine since I removed the tops of one pair and glued and nailed them to the bottoms of another in a creative fit one morning….that I have to grip them with my toes to keep them on only adds to my pride.
I hope it’s a passing thing – but somehow I doubt it. And seriously? It’s the least of our worries, gf……the very least. Quite what the others are, I dont always know….I have perfected the state of being utterly shallow, deep, deep, DEEP down inside.
Hello again! I’m just back from a vacation to Singapore, where we used to live and Bali, where we used to vacation. It was a lovely trip.
Peter is not retired yet, but over the last 15 years has worked from home and/or been out of work. Now he’s either home in his office or on the road (this week). I frankly enjoy when he is away so I have my own schedule. But them I love when he’s home and I have my soul mate with me. I wonder about retirement…the —— (emptiness, vacuum, hole?) of him not ever going to work again. It will be different. The Japanese women have two names they call their retired husbands (who work often 6 days a week for long hours and they never see them)- “a big bag of unburnable trash” and “the wet Autumn leaves that stick to your shoe and won’t come off”! Kind of sums up how they feel! ;-D
Love the picture the Japanese phrases make in my mind, Deb. 🙂 Generally, I like having Tom home and he does spend a lot of it in front of his computer, but I do miss alone time. He spends more time here than I do. And Elisabeth not being in school any more and not having a job yet (Target interview Friday; cross your fingers!) means someone’s always here with me. I believe that this week I’ll take a ride down to the local Barnes and Noble and see how it’s set up; maybe I can write there. Had no idea you were in Singapore to live. Bali sounds like heaven. I know I’ll be missing the ocean sometime in the relatively near future. No matter how much I like the high desert.