After Hailey was born, Victor and I had settled into life in the suburbs just out of Houston, and I struggled in vain to fit in. Hailey was almost four now, and she was sheltered, and protected, and slightly pale from lack of sun in her small private school, where she was learning music and dance and how to be exactly like everyone else. We enrolled her in gymnastics, but all the other preschoolers seemed to be practicing for the Olympics, and more than one mom mentioned putting their toddlers on diets, which was just fucking crazy. In the end, we decided to just quit and let her jump on the couch. Still, she was on the perfect path to fitting in beautifully in a normal, pretty life, and it scared the shit out of me. Both because I wasn’t sure I was actually doing her any favors by protecting her from a life that I found I actually missed, and also because I had to admit that I found myself feeling a little sorry for Hailey. For not being able to go explore the canals, or feed deer in the yard, or have memories of playing with baby raccoons in the house. We had our cats, and she loved our sweet pug, Barnaby Jones Pickles, who was awesome (who was as close to Laura Ingalls’s brindle bulldog as we would ever get), but he was no bathtub full of raccoons, and I suspect even he would have agreed with that.
And so that’s when I found myself convincing Victor that we should move to the country with a few acres of land, so Hailey could run, and explore, and experience a little of the fucked-up sort of rural life that had made Victor and me able to pretend to be comfortable in many different social circles without ever actually fitting into any of them. We’d both had fond memories of growing up in wide-open places, and I was shocked to suddenly realize that now that I’d seen what it was like to live on the pleasant-but-boring “other side of the tracks,” the childhood of country life that I’d wanted to save Hailey from was one that I now treasured. The heat and wild animals and isolation had molded who I was, and I found myself proud of those bumps along the way that had shaped me. It seemed unfair to deprive Hailey of those same experiences, and moving to the country seemed like the perfect answer.
Hailey—discovering the joy of dirt.
West Texas had changed too much to feel like home, but we eventually found a house in the Texas Hill Country, an hour outside Austin. It was in a tiny town, thirty miles from the nearest grocery store, but it was quiet, and nice, and the house sat on a few acres of trees that drifted down to a pretty, open meadow filled with bluebonnets. I felt like I was home. Plus, my office was on the opposite side of the house from Victor’s, and both had doors you could actually close.
And there was sun:
As always when we bought a new home, Victor asked the questions about deed restrictions and taxes, while I asked the two questions I was always responsible for: “Has anyone ever died in the house?” and “How many bodies are buried on the property?” I always assume real estate agents are honest on the first question, because legally I think they have to disclose that, but technically I don’t think they’re required to answer the second. I used to ask whether anyone was buried on the property, but I was afraid that real estate agents weren’t being honest with me, so I switched it to “How many bodies are buried on the property?” because then it makes it sound like I expect there are bodies buried because that’s totally normal, and so they’ll be relieved and casually let slip that there are only two and a half bodies buried there. Victor says that my asking those questions is actually doing just the opposite, and that I’m making everyone uncomfortable, and then I point out that I’m actually fine with bodies buried on the property, but that I want to know where they are in case of the zombie apocalypse. This is the point when most real estate agents excuse themselves. Probably because it’s boring to see couples arguing about the zombie apocalypse all the damn time. I expect this sort of thing is the downside to being a real estate agent.
Eventually, though, we bought the house and began the five stages of moving:
DAY 1: Pack everything nicely with Bubble Wrap. Clean it all first so it’s fresh and ready to be unpacked. Label boxes on all sides.
DAY 2: Start intentionally breaking things so you have a reason not to wrap and pack them.
DAY 3: Find eighteen choppers in the kitchen drawers. Demand that Victor stop buying shit from infomercials late at night. Intentionally break seventeen choppers.
DAY 4: Question why you ever started collecting little glass animals, and who allowed you to have fourteen hundred of them. Also, why do we have three junk drawers? Is that a sign that we’ve finally “made it,” or a sign that we’re hoarders? Try to get on Twitter to ask your friends, but then realize that your husband has already packed your computer cords. Feel utterly and completely alone. Cry in the bathroom, but be unable to blow your nose because you can’t find the box you packed the toilet paper in.
DAY 5: Set a large bonfire in the living room. Laugh maniacally as you push cardboard boxes into it.