the old neighborhood

When I was a little girl Texas was all around me. Limestone riverbeds plumped up the landscape. Chalk rock crumbled in my hand. Carlos Castaneda books, Mexican dresses, Santana music, toe sandals, nude hippies at watering holes, deep blue spring pools, and my house on top of a hill in the middle of a whole neighborhood full of where I came from, we never left. I grew up in The Four Seasons on Berrywood Drive. We missed being named a month of the year by one street. A slight that didn’t matter, we were a line right down the middle of the world, rolling down into a furious creek. The spring of ’82 brought a flood that killed rabbits in a cage that had been propped up on stilts behind a neighbor’s house. It swept the sound and fury along with it, maybe my fury that I never felt, or don’t remember feeling. The neighborhood was filled with kids and surrounded by fields, undeveloped on the outskirts of town, hidden from the interstate by large pecan and oak trees like shawls around us.

We used to follow the trails that wound through the outlying fields on our bikes, sometimes on foot, trails marked by a civilization before us, the 70s kids maybe. We lived the afternoons in forts along tributaries of Walnut Creek. Our next door neighbors, an elderly couple, got shot by Henry Lee Lucas at their liquor store along I-35 and Braker Lane. We used to break in to find their ghosts or killer, the reincarnation of their deaths, for years afterward, on into high school. By then we had lost reverence and were only looking for a cheap thrill heightened by lame pot or cheap beer. My older brother, Jeff, was my best friend then, since we were tots bundled in snowsuits in Grafton, North Dakota, a place my dad took us after graduate school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was born. When I was six Jeff and I moved into that house on Berrywood Drive, at either end of a mottled brown hallway. When we arrived my parents explained to me that my bedroom had a lock on it. I was so young, and they didn’t want me locking us out. Even with that I accidentally locked it shut one day. My parents got mad. I remember holing up in Jeff’s room. He wasn’t mad.

Jeff told me to beat up Chuck, a boy one year older than me who lived caddy corner from us. I don’t know why he wanted me to hit him other than it would be funny. He believed in me, and I would do whatever he said. I don’t remember beating up Chuck, but I probably did. We made horror films with our friends using a Kodak video camera. We climbed fences and snuck out our bedroom windows at night. He stole a car, I stole clothes, he sold fake pot, I made out with boys in cemeteries all before we got to high school. We were arrested and banned from our friends, and decided rebelling wasn’t worth it because we didn’t hate people and we didn’t hate ourselves. We hated what was missing.

Ode to 4 chicks and a dude

Oh my goodness, the time is near. One chick and her dude are about to leave the H-town flow. Why would they want to go and break us up?

My stories are sometimes repeats of everything you already know, but I'm going to retell it anyway. Houston living has been a poof of magic that began on the 4th of July, 2004. That is when four people who really didn't know each other, save for some degrees of separation, had cause to move to this city beyond their better judegment and became instant, rollicking-good-time friends.


The Family

There is a tan, shuttered, two-story house with a red door that sits on the corner of one of Houston's tropically beautiful streets. This is our house, where we meet. The front room is blue, the kitchen white, but our favorite room is in the middle. We were all just there the other night for the Sopranos finale. Joel had spent the earlier part of the day making a Sopranos mix with songs either played on the show, about endings, or mobster-invoking. There was no fanfare about it. You had to clue in. When I heard Van Morrison's "Comfortably Numb" I thought of Christafah, tragic, putting-a-hit-on-your-lover Christafah, and I looked straight at Joel. I knew what he had done. The Sopranos previous episodes were playing in a loop to the soundtrack, the ladies started to roll in with bags of stuff, we were home.


Always give your love away

I have to write this one in stages, a little each day, like an ethnographer. It's cute the way we met, setting up dates to try each other on, but that's pretty typical. Michy, Ho, and me were tight from the beginning. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that our brothers, all three of them, have friendships that go back years--all the way back to the mall on West Campus. And we three have a great fondness for these brothers of ours. It was natural for us to be family. It took the other three girls a little longer to come around, first-year medical school for Steph and Heidi getting in the way. Mari hadn't even moved here yet. But once year two came around, the appeal of medical-school block parties, filled with prematurely mature, fastidious medical students lost its luster.


Adieu, adieu, adieu

It's almost time now. Last night we had our going away party. Sunday brunch in a few hours will be the last planned gathering. It's hard to say goodbye to your family even though you know your love won't change a bit. The people who fill up your day-to-days are the ones of envy because they get to have you more. Michy and Ho, we won't get to have you more anymore. We have to give you back to your people in Dallas, but we sure will miss you.

Ruth Ella Coward Schumacher

It's springtime in Texas, and tomorrow is my grandmother's birthday. Ruth Ella Coward Schumacher passed in August, 1996. She grew up in Illinois, roaming the outdoors, as did my mother, as did I. She had a baby brother, Willis, a mom, and a dad. But her dad, although quite tall and full of health, caught that awaful flu in 1919 and died when Grandmother was just five years old. Her mother had loved him deeply, not in a girlish way, but in a quiet swallow of meaning that spans one's life. She was twenty-five, a widow, with a five- and three-year old to take care of. She went to work for the telephone company as an operator.

Grandmother was green and gold floral, a double stitch, clothes on the line, wisteria, hummingbirds, and dimes in a dish. She taught me how to make things using my mind and my hands--to read a pattern, measure, press and sew; to carve ceramics using sandpaper, tiny tools, and brushes for dusting; to make intricate wreaths; and to roll hair in curlers, with some Rave solution for waves that would roll down your back. Her house smelled like eucalyptus leaves and antique wood. The floors creaked underneath the carpeted hallway where our ancestry hung. I would go there every summer to spend three weeks. We filled our time with projects and the mall, and she would send me home with new outfits and new skills. I felt completely capable in her presence. Her spirit wanted to take on any seeable notion. She house painted, hunched over her garden till sweat dripped; she wanted to do things herself, and I did too. I let her show me how. I listened carefully to her. She was happy. She loved me. She didn't worry. She was proud of me. Grandmother always knew what to do. She wasn't daunted by life.

Kate & Dave

It's the last week in NYC for me. I'm feeling extra good this morning. I've slumber partied it over at Kate&Dave's Inhood apartment because we've been doused by the moisture Gods. Humidity and upper-80-degree weather for days now, the taxing nature of which was best exemplified I think by the little girl I passed on the way home from school yesterday. Her big brother was threatening her with fists to get her to take steps forward toward home. All her 1st-grade mental capabilities could do to process the burden of the heat was to face the fence and cry. I stopped to help (offering pink heart and rainbow stickers, which did bring a smile), but it was her brother's decision to pick her up and carry her that made the most sense in the end.

Cool breezes from the fan, mixed in with slight air conditioning and a cup of coconut coffee have made waking up this morning most welcoming. It's one week before school ends. The anticipation of summer break is also one of the most welcoming feelings you can have. For me, it usually goes hand-in-hand with leaving town. Last year we left the day after for trips to Texas; the Midwest by way of St. Louis, the Arch, and the Museum of the West; and then me going further to Chicago, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. Two months of continuous travel is freedom from the everyday burdens that make you want to face the fence and cry.

Time to pack up. But before I do I'm going to hang out with my friends. Nothing fancy. We'll just sit around and talk, mess with the computer, take a walk, or go to the store--completely relaxing times, the kind you can't recapture through distance.

What does a little New York Thorn Bush/Texas Flower do on her first day home after driving cross country? Gaze; sip coffee; read Texas Highways; soak up all the Indian Paintbrushes, Buttercups, Bluebonnets, rolling plains, cow congregations, and everything green; and sit down to record it--my version of a thick lead pencil scratching a spiral notepad.

For those of you who have never visited, my mother's house is on a lot in what's referred to as "The Greenbelt." These greenbelts are scattered around the Austin landscape. They are belts of green--a dozen variety of oak, ever-present cedar, sumac, yucca, and agarita--elongating through limestone canyons, dotted with steep drop-offs and gentle slopes. Mom planned this house to sit like a treehouse, overlooking the canyon from six floor-length windows, side-by-side along the northwestern side. This is the livingroom, the treehouse, and then it connects to a covered outdoor deck in the rear so that it easily becomes indoor/outdoor.

From the couch this morning, the sunrise was at eye-level, a muted white hazy sunglow through the scattered boughs. Stepping outside, the rain has left everything showery clean, alert. In the air there is a mixture of sweet honey, bitter greens, and robust grounds. The sun is coming up. Yummy, I'm home.

Music is coming out of my purse. It's loud for purse music. The treble is high--pure and piercing like your chest voice on the high notes. I've been thinking about church. Jeff and I were born to parents with differing views on the Lord. It occurred to me while watching "Rock Star Daughters," a new VH1 docu-wonder (I didn't really watch it; background only, assuredly), that my dad is a rock star dad. He totally is. It all makes sense to me--what I've been trying to make sense of. He's rock-n-roll like the Stones, graying with a cigarette slanting down from his mouth as often as he can manage it.

So my dad grew up rigid Presbyterian, and my mom grew up higher-order Methodist, the sophisticated Christians who deemed themselves thinkers, progressive for their tolerance on biblical and moral matters, and ever the appreciaters of classical music, traditional hymns accompanied by Bach organ, of course, but often by a striking mezzo soprano or a string quartet. I don't know much about the way my dad grew up in the church except for his defiance of it. I've heard some story about him forbidding my mother to baptize us, to raise us like he'd been raised. Dad's a contrary to polite society, to the norms of society. So, indeed, he did not scurry us off to Sunday school. I'm not sure what my mom's story was in those days. I know we went to a Presbyterian church in Denton when we were toddlers, not for very long though. We always skipped stones, from church to church, through the growing up years. After Denton it was onto University United Methodist on the University of Texas campus. That's where the beautiful mezzo soprano came into our lives. She had thick chocolate hair full of texture like her voice. It fell back away from her forehead, highlighting her burgundy lips and sculpted cheek bones. The mezzo soprano held herself in the most serene way, allowing the tones to come from her center.

We stayed at that church for a few years, mostly because of her. I sang in the youth choir and looked forward to the juice and cookies in the courtyard after the service each Sunday. Jeff, well, he looked forward to music coming out of his earphones while sitting in the balcony by himself. Defiant.

Mom grew tired of fighting her children. Whines and even stronger protests coming from her adolescent son, we never went as a family again. I think it was my sophomore year in high school when I knew something was missing for me. I didn't fit in. I didn't know myself, but knew that I could, if only I were exposed to the right elements, friends maybe. Maybe it was in music or places, food, texts, circles of discussion. It was there, but I was far away from it. I didn't know myself like I wanted to. I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to go to church again. Just me and mom. We tried out five or six, an Episcopal that my mother was high on. The sanctuary was nice, the exterior architecture too. I wanted a pretty place, aesthetic beauty to cradle me. I could easily dismiss an option before ever reading a program or hearing a sermon just by doing a drive-by. Mom and I agreed. We both wanted what was familiar, and we wanted a preacher man or woman who would make us consider life, the world around us, and the people we encounter. I was looking for ritual to keep me whole. What we inherit feeds that element within ourselves, whether it's defiance or music, or sophistication, or simple tradition.

My grandparents were members of the First United Methodist Church of Richardson, Texas for years. I remember the little offering envelopes that hung before you as you sat in the pews, and the round sanctuary, like a hexagon. My grandmother was an alto with a large vibrato who sang out in church. She liked to hum the hymns at home or in the car. I love my church inheritance more than my defiant inheritance, but I take both, sometimes with a bitter pill when the defiance alienates us from one another.

By the way . . . in those years, my mom very much resembled the mezzo soprano.

52 Degrees and Rising

In four months almost to the day I will be driving yet another Ryder truck packed full with my belongings. This one I've been preparing for for about two years. It's the big one, the return home.

Perceptions of home retain their quality of the things you left for, what it couldn't give you, for no finite period of time. It lingers, in the front of your mind, on the tips of words you are surprised to find spilling out of your mouth to strangers when they ask polite questions about your place of birth. But all the while home remains your identity. I met James last night in the City. He checked my driver's license and asked what part of Texas I grew up in. "Austin" (me). "Born and raised" (him). And do you know what I did? I put my backpack down and gave him a hug. "I can tell you're from Texas" (him). James told me his whole building is full of people from the Lone Star State. I nodded because I understood. We leave, but we find each other out there.

I wasn't able to let go of those lingering perceptions of the things I left for until recently. When people move, there seems to be this great debate about whether one is running from something, or forever searching for something within a locale rather than within oneself. Moving from state to state doesn't seem to be an epidemic, so I wonder why people fear this as a harm to which their loved ones are susceptible. There is purpose in it--moving. Forward motion to give a dream a chance, to go to school, to see how a different environment suits your temperament, or sometimes to leave something behind that needs leaving.

When I left the Promised Land, it wasn't feeding me. I needed pushes in all sorts of ways, the sorts of ways an unfamiliar place can give you. I needed to stand alone, away from my identity for awhile, so as not to rely upon it. I needed to find out what did feed me, because I was good at things, I had friends and family near, but what mattered? I am someone who needs to know what matters, to get clear on that, as a foundation. Some people's foundations are built up nice and sturdy by their families, or maybe they're born with it, an innate sense of direction and self-knowledge. I've been building mine through the experience of the unknown.

The drive to test life isn't at the front of my mind anymore. It faded away, little by little, while other aspects made themselves known, like being close to loved ones. I ventured at first with the intention of relying upon myself. Then, I ventured to find folks I could rely upon. Stage 3: I'm not so much fighting anymore. I've got a lot of inner fight, a quality that serves to help things sit right within. It's like jostling all the flakes in a snow globe and following them as they gently lay down. The forward motion of moving has helped things settle inside; it's helped me be able to acknowledge the irreplaceable spaces where family, friends, and love hold me together. These revelations are with me to take wherever I go.

I'm going home because it's where I come from. The scenes outside the car window, I want to see again.

Last night an old friend of my brother's played guitar and sang at a venue on the Lower East Side. The performance was low-key, sometimes just Amy (the singer) on stage, at other times my sister-in-law joining her on back-up vocals, her husband blending in on piano, and my brother adding in rhythm on bass. Pieces of home. Where you come from. Your history and memory and makeup. Walking through Central Park yesterday winter was breaking into spring, fifty-two degrees outside.

What NYC Means to Me--

This fourth of July weekend is my one-year anniversary living in NYC. I ended up here by default. For me, it was being ready to leave someplace but not knowing quite where to go that placed me in the lap of this city. The experience getting here was one that I love--loading up the Ryder (it gives me a great sense of freedom to feel me & all my possessions together as a mobile unit), driving through the hollars and plateaus of this country, seeing cities I’ve never seen before, places like Pittsburgh, wondering what I’d be like if I grew up there. Would I talk funny? Would I scramble to get away all through my teenage years? My brother went with me to Pittsburgh. We started out in Chicago and ended in Astoria, Queens. When I think of long trips, he's usually there too, riding the many windy backroads of Texas with my Dad and stepmom in the front, chain-smoking with their windows cracked an eighth inch, and Jeff and I in the back leaning toward each of our windows like caged birds in the middle of a yellow, hazy coop. But I loved it. I love being on the road. I probably spent half my childhood in a car, going to Richardson, Port Aransas, and Kerrville again and again. All our friends and family were in Texas. We never left the state. Everybody’s there, and I’m in New York.

I’m painting a picture of separation, but in actuality this not being true has given me my sense of belonging since I moved here. The other morning I was walking down my block on the way to work and a childhood friend zoomed past on his bike. I called out and we had a chat before heading off. That’s community. It's smalltown.

That’s what NYC has come to mean to me--smalltown. There’s great comfort where you can simply be, amongst people doing the same. In some places in the city I feel this more. Tompkins Square Park reminds me of Barton Springs, the drag, and Hippie Hollow in Austin. If you walk through neighborhoods you notice the shifts--ten blocks moves you from bohemian to uptight, Arab to Italian--you notice the blends, and a melody of languages. There are not-so-pleasant times when the horns, concrete, and metal tubes underground start to close in on me. I long to be near water that expands to the horizon, or standing in the middle of hills filled with cedar and oak. In these moments I’d settle for not breathing in dirt. But because the city gives me meaning, I'm learning to temper these feelings.

I don’t think I’m having a love affair with New York. It’s more like New York is letting me give it a try. I didn’t expect the city to speak to me. I didn’t expect much at all. When I moved here I had been broken down for awhile. But what it has given me is a sense that helps me attune to humanity. It speaks to me through the many languages and brands of people communing. It is tolerance and fluidity. It never stops.