I am not sure I like the new layout on my WordPress site. I came here originally because I felt I could use the tools and such to better advantage, but in the middle of working yesterday I clicked and this foreign looking configuration popped up in place of my familiar and trusted dashboard. WTF?! But that’s the nature of the blogosphere – the geeks are forever clamoring for updates and improvements in their lust for widgets (and perhaps a secret desire to drive away those of us who are merely bloggers and not techies too?). So I figured I would adjust, relearn and press on. Then I couldn’t link. I highlighted, hit the link button and was greeted by an empty box. Rob suggested I switch browsers, which I did reluctantly and was able to complete my task but – I hate Foxfire. I am a Safari girl and if I am stuck with Foxfire, well, I don’t know how at peace I can be with this for long. I found the self-congratulatory post that Matt (of WordPress) wrote to us and the mostly glowing, suck-up comments praising the new look and functionality, but I am not thrilled. I do not like this, Sam I am.
I met Susan at the bed and breakfast she runs with her husband while Rob and I were on our recent honeymoon trip to the States. She is hoping to retire to soon to Montana. Her favorite place in the world is the area around Boseman. As I listened to her talking, I wondered what it would be like to be attached to a spot/location as she was. Rob’s spot is a bit less fixed, but he yearns for the mountains and the solitude that lets him recharge his inner reserves. Many of my relatives on my mother’s side seem to have an affinity for Arizona around Mesa. My late husband Will loved the Boy Scout camp in New Mexico where he spent his teenage summers, hiking and camping. My daughter’s favorite spot right now is my parent’s home where she can run in and out freely and play with neighbor children. I haven’t any place where I feel affinity or miss when I am away. My home perhaps but I have lived in many apartments and houses over the course of my life. Wherever I was living was my base, but I didn’t miss the structures terribly when I moved on. I have a fondness for my first real house. The one I bought myself, where eventually Will and I lived for a time, but I don’t long for it. I love our house now, but I could move to another location and be just as happy. My blog friend Tanja wrote a piece about leaving her home in the U.S. for her home country of the Netherlands and how difficult it was seeming, and while I intellectually get what she is talking about, I didn’t feel any great loss for the house or the Des Moines area. A few people there truly matter but house is just wood and cement and probably a whole lot of PVC materials.
I wonder if this makes me odd? So many people have places they cannot leave. On Easter Sunday I listened to my sister, aunt and brother-in-law discuss a situation involving a cousin and his wife. His company is pulling up stakes and relocating in Mexico. They offered him a position and practically speaking he can’t really turn it down with only 6 years to full retirement and the economy being what it is. She won’t move. She has lived her whole life in the small Wisconsin area that most of her and my cousin’s family has called home for generations. Even for six years. Even when financial security for their not so far away old age is at stake. She refuses to think about. My brother-in-law saw merit in her choice. Snapped at me for suggesting she should “suck it up” as six years in not much time in the grand scheme. But my brother-in-law is also of the vein of those who cannot leave their roots.
I left home at 18 for college and never came back but for visits. I felt the initial homesickness of someone that age, but honestly preferred what I found away from my hometown. When the time came to decide where the relationship Rob and I had was heading, I knew that it was with him and in Canada. Relocating outside the U.S. was disorienting for a bit but ultimately there was never a question of not doing it. And though I feel more at home in Canada than I have anywhere in my life, that is Rob and not the geology.
Perhaps I find my place with the people I am most connected to? If so, I have scarcely ever been connected. Will and now Rob. My daughter. My niece Julie who I have seen since a family adopted her at age two and taken far away and out of my life. Which brings me to my journey. I have felt for most of my life that I was in a holding pattern, waiting. And while I waited I was there for someone else. My mother as she struggled with her marriage to an alcoholic. Certain friends along the way where my primary job was to listen. Teaching was certainly about others because as good as I was and as fulfilling that it could be at times, there was always a sense that I had another and more personal calling. My life with Will was about him. Being his happily ever after. Protecting him. Ensuring that he wouldn’t suffer at the end of his life. Katy, I think, was sent to help me – give me purpose and comfort in her own little girl way. She was told me that she chose me to be her mother twice, once before and now.
Rob is a reconnection. I feel home in him and a sense of union that seems to have been lacking in my life since before I could name it. What our twining of paths means is yet to be fully discovered and the place that will be most significant in our journey is still to be found. Will that place be THE place? The house I will long for when I am away from it? I don’t know. I think I am a people person, which is ironic given the dearth of people to whom I am close and even interact with beyond the most superficial of levels. Rob and I are the same in that way. We really have no friends. Well, I have a couple but he has no real friends – he tells me this often. In the Journey of Souls, it talks about younger souls needing to be greeted after death by many of the souls they were closest to in their lives – current and past because it helped ease the initial shock. Older and more advanced souls had fewer and eventually no one to great them. Does this carry over into our mortal time? The numbers of fellow travelers is in proportion to where we are on our soul journey? Maybe we lose our sense of location attachment. As we progress we begin to focus mainly on those who are important. People are more important than things be they possession or places.
I shaved my legs today for the first time in, oh – I don’t know, three months? Can’t say why I let them go/grow but there is something about the endless cold and constant of underwear that reaches to your ankle bones that simply doesn’t inspire one to tend to leg hair. Besides, my husband only just recently noticed that I had stopped, so it can’t be that big of a deal to men despite the fact that smooth silky legs are sold to women by advertisers as being some sort of aphrodisiac. This is probably only the second or third time in my life that I have allowed the hair on my leg to attain noticeable length. The first time was against my will as my mother refused to discuss the possibility of my shaving my legs until I was fourteen, and at the time in spite of my fury with such an arbitary decision, I felt grateful to be allowed to shave my armpits as soon as it became noticeable. The second time I was in my mid-ish twenties. It was the summer that the first of my high school friends, Amy, got married. I wasn’t dating and being a red-head naturally my leg hair was very light in color. You couldn’t see it unless you were inches away and no one was interested in getting that close at the time. I found shaving tedious and like many young women reserved shaving for times of actual relationships that might involve – up close inspections. I spent a lot of my twenties unshaven. This latest hirsute state was not due to lack of anything but rested more upon the cold and the dry air up here which has caused me to limit showering time and use a lot of lotion. Shaving promotes dry winter itch which is not a fire that needs fuel. Now that the weather is warming (notice I didn’t say “warm”) and I have had occasion to wear a bathing suit (and the fact that when he did notice the hair my husband was visibly shocked – though not put off), I decided that perhaps it was time to mow. I dulled only one razor though it was a quarto-bladed one and now have smooth legs from a few inches above the knee to the foot on each leg. It is a remarkably sensual feeling for the first few hours. It also really accentuates the deathly white pallor of one’s winter hide. Just for fun, I googled up the history of shaving for both men and women. Men, it seems shaved for reasons sensible and not so, but women – unsurprisingly – were the victims of advertising that played on their deep-seated body image problems. Leave it to the “beauty” industry to get ugly.
