You know how you leave a guy's name and number in your cell phone long after you know he's not going to call you anymore because if he does call you want to recognize it's him, and then after a really long time you finally get it, he truly, sincerely is not going to call you anymore so you delete his name and phone number from your phone because it gives you a little bit of a pinch to the heart every time you happen to see it in there when you're looking for something else? You heave a great big ol' sigh and mentally say farewell to him forever and take one last chance to moan and groan over the idea that you won't ever see him again. Then you delete the number and let it go.
And two weeks later an unrecognized number pops up on the screen as your phone rings, and you answer it wondering who it is, only to have your heart turn inside out at the sudden, unexpected sound of his voice.
That's a good metaphor for what's happening to me right now. For years I cherished a deep and hopeful dream in my heart that I might find a way to leave Texas with my son to live in some other very un-Texaslike place far away. Even when it seemed unlikely, I held on to the hope that it might. I definitely wanted to be ready if the opportunity presented itself, so I had no thoughts of buying a home or doing anything that would be difficult for us to walk away from (like a marriage or starting my own business).
Whenever my lease came up to renew, there's that pinch of pain in my heart as I think how much I wish I could be packing up a Uhaul instead of renewing the lease. Whenever job recruiters called me to mention job opportunities in other states, it pinched me even if the job was one I wouldn't take or located in a place I wouldn't live anyway. Just the reminder that the world is full of people who are free to live their lives wherever they want to live or move anywhere they like whenever they feel like it, but I'm not one of those people. Ow, the pinch!
Okay, so I finally decided to take that number out of the cell phone of my heart and bid farewell to the hope that it might happen for me. I indulged in a few days of moaning and groaning over it, then I contacted a real estate agent and started the process of buying a house. Got us a good one, and then went to work decorating it and filling it with furniture. Really big house, lots and lots of furniture and decorations. And I bought a second car. What a nightmare it would be to move--not just out of state but to move anywhere at all would be an incredible hassle---but I didn't think of it because I no longer had any other idea for us than that we'd stay put right here for the forseeable future. Last year I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of opening a bookstore, and I set about making that a reality. The only thing I could have done to make our status as Texans more permanent was to get married, and that's not likely to happen in any state at any time.
So here I sit, with my roots thrust down into the dry Texas soil, and I am most definitely more rooted than I've ever been in my life, when suddenly the phone rings and I glance at the screen to see an idea I didn't recognize cuz it had been a year since the last time it pinched my heart. Like a whirlwind, my dream whipped back into my mind and turned all the serenity into chaos.
Good-bye, Texas. The decision wasn't really difficult to make at all, even though I will have an absolute booger of a time pulling up these roots and I will miss my house and all the stuff I put in it. There aren't many people in Texas I'll miss, at least not many I'd have been likely to see again anyway.
Guess where I'm going....here's a hint.
With all the knots I have to untie here, it'll be a while before I'm gone, but by the end of this year, darlings, you gonna have to go the whole wide world just to find Tess, and she ain't coming back.
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