HOME AGAIN....After ALL these years!
Ah, yes......and as the snow falls in a region not particularly accustomed to it, another housewife sits down with a laptop and a dream, and yet another BLOG is born. Don't you just live for the erratic musings of people who prefer to dream and write about life than to actually get busy and, well....LIVE IT? (Yes...I confess.)
Memphis, TN is truly NOT accustomed to this type of weather (snow all night, now sleet/snow mix for the day predicted, with more snow tonight to finish it off.) I have another confession to make......I've always gotten a bit of a perverse pleasure when God shows off a bit, and stops these self-important humans dead in their go-getter tracks. I remember relishing it first when I ran across my first Type-A Boss-lady, back in the early eighties (you know, back when the 'you can do it all' mantra was just getting started?) That probably accounts for my somewhat disdainful regard for those types now in my fifties, and why I'm not seated in some comfortable office, in an expensive executive office-chair, in an actual paying job. They sense my disdain, it seems.
In reality, though, it's not exactly disdain, anymore, though it once was. Now, it's just exhaustion, and a longing to come right out and say..."HEY, who really WANTS it all!? It's ALL too MUCH, and I'd much rather have just a little bit of it and then just go read a book or something."
Well, all those go-getters went and got, and I got a few things along the way, and snuck off and read a LOT of books. Now they have, have had, or maybe by now have LOST some or all of it, (between the economy and that gaggle of children they all decided they simply MUST pump out in the late 80s early 90's), while I sit here contentedly with a passel of cats and a couple of dogs. They have bigger houses, grayer hair, and more ex-husbands than me, I also notice, and that damn 401K they were so hot about is probably gone or severely diminished by now, too. (Again, kids and the economy and maybe rehab, as well.)
So, I guess, all things considered, I'm kind of sitting in the catbird seat, (or in a seat covered with cat hair), but probably more comfortable than them.
I guess I knew that, sooner or later, I'd start a blog. I think I just hated the name...BLOG. Sounds so, well, awkward. At fifty-one, I guess I'm entitled to a few 'these kids nowadays' type statements, so let me make my first one here: These kids nowadays (in this case, the ones that invented the word BLOG), well.....they just love things with awkward, abrupt-sounding titles. I mean, couldn't they have called it something nicer sounding, like maybe 'online journal' or 'internet column' or even 'web diary'? BLOG just sounds so...well, NASTY. When I first heard the term, I wasn't sure if someone was ill or just trying out some new extreme weight-loss regiment. 'BLOGGING' sounds too much like GAGGING'.
So, whatever.....I guess I'll just jump in and gag right along with everyone else who finds themselve narrating the world's ridiculous story, at least the part of it playing itself out in my small perspective.
Yesterday was SuperBowl Sunday, number forty-four to be exact, and the Saints Marched it Right In, all right. I'm not a huge football fan, but usually make an effort to watch the Superbowl with hubby, him being nice enough to prefer to stay home to watch it, and all. We make snacks and have a good enough time, but this year was special for me, and I know I'm not alone. I lived for a brief time in New Orleans as a child, and have returned many times since, all at different and rather key times in my life. As a matter of fact, I've often thought a good framework for my own little biography might be by arranging the story around and defining each chapter by the various visits I've made there. At each visit, I was at a different point in my life, and I notice that only the friends, husbands or whatever that went with me ended up being very significant to my life in the long run. (Hmmmm....maybe THAT'S what happened to the relationships that didn't quite make it....should I have run them down for a trot around the Quarter, you think?) In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't, as I've ended up pretty much where I'd rather be.
I guess I could blather on at length about why New Orleans 'needed this', but it seems to be overstating a rather obvious point. Besides, it's more fun to take the snottier perspective of those that are now sticking out their tongues at the people who said New Orleans should be razed after Katrina. "Yeah....raze THAT, Bitch!" The 'Aints, INDEED!"
So, I merrily put on the slightly faded Saints Jersey I found at a second-hand store here in Memphis, a few years after Katrina sent the survivors scattering north. Just finding it there, discarded and a little 'off-black' spoke volumes to me. I have another that had a nifty 'New Orleans' with a Fleur-di-lis, all washed out and faded, that I had before the storm hit and I treasured it even more after Katrina. I love the faded look and feel of it, but felt my fingers itching to pick up a needle and embroidery thread, and maybe stitch in at least part of it, as if renewing my faith that the city would endure.
Someone from Memphis was ruminating the other day about their feelings toward New Orleans as a Memphian. It's like, if you 'get' New Orleans, then you 'get' Memphis. Memphis is about a whole lot more than Elvis, Blues and BBQ, but it's hard to fit all that on a T-Shirt. New Orleans is the same way. Even die-hard New-Orleanians that don't even attend many of the things the rest of us think ARE New Orleans, love their city, and love that all that stuff is (or was) going on there, even if it all did or is happening across town. New Orleans and Memphis are like bacon, or burnt popcorn. You don't have to eat a bite of it to know it's there.
When I first got to Memphis, I used to always wonder where 'it' was....that illusive thing that makes it so 'Memphis'. I had a job that kept me on the road most of the time, but sometimes, when I'd return home late in the evening, I'd drive up Third en route to Midtown, and roll the car windows down as I approached the intersection of Third and Beale. There it was...that sound. 'Boomp-Boomp-BOOMP-BOOMP-Boomp-Boomp-Boomp-BOOMP', over and over again, in a slow-fast progression, like an irregular heartbeat. No, not exactly 'like New Orleans', as many Northerners would like to describe it, but with a certain lax purpose about itself. And the particular sound of Memphis isn't really captured by hearing just a lick of the music....it's gotta have the ebb and flow of the people running through it for the sound to be complete. There's something so specific about the people of Memphis, especially in the Downtown/Midtown areas of the city, that identify the city. You can slap on a BB King album and hear the tunes alright, but unless you hear a passing, 'Yes-Lawd', or catch a hand waving in the air to testify while the head is bowed down low, well, you just ain't heard the tune.
I remember one Sunday night, when I was SUPPOSED to be 'running to the grocery for some cat food' or something, when I got out, cruising around in that impossible but fine old ride I sort of 'inherited' from my late father-in-law. I'd absent-mindedly flipped on the radio and scanned a bit, then started kind of enjoying the sound of the soft rain and BB moaning about how 'The Thrill is Gone.'
It was one of those moments you stumble over, then realize you wish you had somebody in the backseat filming it all. Suddenly, I decided that every one of those cats was overweight, anyway, and might could wait a half hour or so to eat. I began engaging in one of my favorite hobbies....curbsurfing.
I really didn't need anymore 'stuff', but was continually amazed at just what people would throw out. Early on a Sunday evening such as this was prime time, too, right after they'd had all weekend to get industrious and clean out garages. Also, the best curb-surfing neighborhoods were just adjacent to my grocery store of preference, so I didn't feel too badly about stealing down a sidestreet here or there 'on the way'. I think that's the night I scored a nearly new vacuum-cleaner, which I actually needed, and a wooden rocker, which I didn't particularly need, but which sat on my back patio and was subsequently used fairly often until it died a more dignified death of natural causes.
I really don't remember exactly what all kind of crap I found, but I've got a memory now that's as evocative as a song, a small video that will roll anytime in my head when bidden.
My mother recently moved to Memphis, and is still somewhat taken aback with the familiarity of the people here, most especially that of her own daughter. She's shocked that I'll just start talking to whoever's standing next to me, and not all of that is a Memphis thing.....I'm just peculiar. But I do notice, that it's easier to do that all day and not be thought odd in Memphis than in any other place I've been. Hubby can get called away for a day or two on business, and I can literally spend all my time at home with the dogs and cats, read a book, go to a movie by myself, and maybe for a little 'junktique' tour, as I call them, and never feel lonely. I just talk to whomever I encounter like I've known them all my life, and most of them answer as if they've known me a while, too. (Every once in a while you'll get some up-tight type that looks at you like you're trying to ask them for money, but they're probably from 'Out East', so we try to overlook them.) Poor, lonely souls, usually surrounded by people.
Trains are another big identifier of Memphis, though I've only recently come to realize how much so. Last year, I returned from a hectic trip back to Kentucky to see family. It had been an unusually contentious visit to what I USED to call 'home', and I heaved a sigh of relief when I entered the outskirts of the city, actually smiling to myself as I made sure my cardoors were locked. Ah, yes.....home sweet home.....look, that same crackhead is still walking down the side of the interstate near the Hollywood exit. Poor fool....hope he don't get run down. I wound my way toward my neck of the woods, eyes sharp in the spots one needed to 'watch oneself' and eyes wandering as I passed some favorite old houses. Then my little area came into view, and I realized...I WAS 'home'. Memphis WAS now my home, and had been for many, many years. I was now actually 'from' someplace.....here!
"I'm from Memphis." I said it outloud to myself, meaning it for the first time, consciously, and claiming it for my own.
Honeybear had thoughtfully invited me out to dinner at my favorite little winebar in Midtown (Y'all know which one, if you're 'from here') and as I slicked up my hair in the bathroom with the cracked, but once beautiful tile, and listened to the rain and the trains in the distance outside the bathroom window, something inside me finally relaxed in a way it hasn't since I was a child.
I'm really home.
