A Triptych of My Husband's Home Town (panel two)

This visit to Grayville certainly was not our first look into that mirror of my husband's history, it was simply the first time the town lived up to its name for us.

Currently, the highway through the little village is being widened, so I suppose the town will soon reflect its symbolic name in that a traveler will be able to whiz through it seeing only a passing gray blur; but that is not really what I mean by it living up to its name. For years, we have taken the time to look at the town, dissecting its influence on us, but we saw only pure black and white in it--mostly the black. Now we are seeing the blend of the two, the something gray and unfathomable. I blogged a few days ago about the ultimate sameness of the glass half empty/glass half full analogy used by many to analyze life's ups and downs. I feel like that idea comes into a fuller ripening here.

Our joint soul-quest can be given a visual representation through the example of skewed lines. Lines in space that pierce a common plane but never run parallel and never intersect are skewed. And, life for both my husband and me felt something like leaping from one of these lines--the line called "childhood"--to a separate skewed line called "adulthood." Many in our generation and in our current world know this feeling. In this respect, my husband describes himself as a man who had a childhood with its fair share of joys, but at the same time, a childhood that failed miserably to prepare him for the adulthood he now knows. Was this the fault of his parents? "The village" that raised him?

Fault is hard to assess, but this much is obvious: the lines men leapt across for generations were parallel, or at least intersecting, in the rural world from which we came; but now they are as skewed as were those same lines for the first generation of Pilgrims. There seems to be nothing on the new line that corresponds to the things we learned were "reliable" on the old one. The change of direction prompts vertigo. Who am I supposed to be on this line? Who are you? How do we walk it? And so, we have spent years looking to understand this world that proves to be so different from the world of our parents and their parents. Years trying to assess blame for the seemingly undeserved hardship and stress. Years biting our tongues as those same parents offered the rationale that they never had the stresses we have, so we must be greedy or unwise or undisciplined. They fear their own line dies as we raise our children to be on this new unfortunate (in their eyes) line. For years, we fight the shame of this judgment imposed by those we'd most like to please. For years, we simply tried to get our new footing. Then we arrived at this weekend...

This weekend felt like we were given a mysterious opportunity to drop off the line entirely and onto a magical plane of reflection and meditation, a place to simply view these lines--skewed regarding time and lifestyle. And though these lines remain skewed forever as they disappear into the distance, what can happen at that plane is a sort of uniting in this one thing: their simultaneous points of penetration of that plane of awareness. Somehow, this feels very important in a way much larger than our little lives can commemorate. If I can put it to words, maybe I'll even remember what standing on this plane of reflection is teaching me. I hope I can. Then again, maybe it will be like waking up in the middle of the night, thinking I had dreamed the answer to the secret of life, jotting it down on a bedside notepad, sleeping again in deep satisfaction, and waking the next day to see I've written only gibberish.

Time will tell. For now, I'll do my best to preserve what is fresh, to show the two worlds through various contrasting images.

• In one world, cement is used primarily for its cheapness, its convenience and its role in facilitating mobility. In the other world, gravel still serves this purpose, and cement is often used in decorating. It stands as a paradoxical memorial to things that are alive nearby but are already receding: a pair of lawn geese or deer or dogs, a birdbath with a cement cardinal inviting other "real" birds: Come back! There is yet room for independent live things here.
• In one world, landscaping is carefully groomed to be symmetrical or maybe to be asymmetrical, to be ethnic and sensitive to a multitude of environmental factors--in any case, it is landscaping that is intentional and the result of informed effort. In the other world, landscaping is manicured but not so often regimented; planned yet still somehow relaxed. And it carries its own reflection of informed effort. But in the first world, the dust of the landscaper's feet still lingers in the air; in the other world, the original landscaper has long since turned to dust, leaving behind the perennial ring of irises or maybe day lilies at the foot of an oak of ancient circumference.
• In one world, a fence operates as a much-needed boundary, offering privacy where it is sorely needed and giving an inoffensive view where the horizon is not an option. In the other, a fence is just...a fence. (This comparison comes from my husband's lips.)
• In one world, an outdoor gathering of people in lawn chairs occurs along a graceful canal that runs through downtown like a living piece of rococo art. The people gather to hear the symphony play an outdoor concert, hoping this event will give them peace and rejuvenating inspiration. In the other, the outdoor gathering of people in lawn chairs occurs outside a strangely triangular building of yellow brick, perched on the banks of the lake-that-was-a-river. These people also listen, but to a self-appointed preacher in a crisp white shirt with a plywood lectern. They, too, hope to be given peace and rejuvenating inspiration.
• Changes in the homeplaces also tell the difference between the worlds: in one world, they simply move to the suburbs, leaving little remembrance of anyone's former squatting rights...in the other, homeplaces are burned down and replaced with newer trailers. Or they may be left standing, but covered with new siding to replace the old, brown "brick-look" tarpaper. In that world, though, the trees and the street names don't change. Sometimes an old shed in the corner of the lot will even survive where the house itself did not. Sometimes, not everything is replaced, and not everything is forgotten.
• In one world, to see a bank means seeing polished marble, creative architecture, a bronze plaque. In the other, to see a bank means seeing a nondescript double wide trailer with an attached carport that shades the drive-up window. The sign in front very likely could have cost more than the building itself.
• In one world, central air is the greatest form of relief on a hot day. In the other, drinking a glass of iced tea while sitting in front of a box fan that sucks fragrant but humid air through a window, a fan held in place by pillows stuffed around it...this is the greatest form of relief on a hot day.
• In one world, you know the mayor's name and occasionally see him on television. You trust he is wise enough to run his community competently. In the other, you bump into the mayor at the local grocery store where he wears a Hawaiian print shirt and buys the local newspaper just like anyone. He knows your name (even though you're not a local anymore) and has, as a matter of fact, already heard that you're camping in town for the weekend. You trust he, too, is wise enough to run his community competently.
• In one world, camping means taking up temporary residence in a place where the sites are clean and carefully measured, a place where many engaging craft activities are offered to the kids at the community center/snack bar. My husband says that camping in this world means going to a place where even the bugs have name-tags. In the other world, campgrounds contain crooked water pumps, broken-cement-block fire rings, and a women's restroom. (There's a men's, too, but the light bulb is out in that windowless chamber; thus, everyone uses the women's room...But bring your own toilet paper if you feel inclined to use any, and don't lock the door as the lock is broken. You'll be trapped inside. Better to simply take someone along to stand guard, or you can just say a friendly howdy-do to anyone who walks in on you. After all, the chances of this are slim as there aren't many campers around anyway.)
• In one world, kids do things like soccer and lacrosse where they are always under someone's watchful eye, participating in educational, healthy, directed, expensive, insured activities. In the other, a kid still gets on a bike late in the morning with a few bucks in his pocket. He hollers bye and spends the day at the pool or at the park. If anything educational occurs, it is the result of random luck. His mom doesn't give it a second thought if he doesn't reappear until dark. Neither of them considers it a wasted day.

Finally, a bridge becomes apparent between the old world and the new, an arc springs between the skewed lines: in one world, the best-tasting water comes in a plastic bottle. You're on a first-name basis with it, and you pay good money for it. But in the other world, the best-tasting water comes from a waist-high pipe in the ground, staked up with some rope and scrap-wood. It is free if you can lift the pump handle. A child crosses from the new world into the old and asks, "Dad, is this water clean?" A father familiar with both worlds answers, "Eh? Let it run a minute before you drink any." The child waits, and then cups his hand and drinks before investing himself utterly, thrusting his sweaty head under the flow for a cool drenching. The drenching would have been less likely to happen in the "new" world...what with the water costing so much--and of course there's the central air, making such a baptism against the heat simply unnecessary. With the arrival of every good thing, something is lost. With the oppressiveness of every bad thing, something can be gained. But that is more what I want to think about tomorrow.

Such are the cultural and lifestyle differences of the two worlds. Happily, we find we can now move casually between them. Happily, we attempt to show our children the good on both of the skewed lines: the challenge and the vitality of the new world is ever with us. We are indeed pilgrims here, and there are no "Indians" hiding in the brush, happy to show us how to grow corn when we get hungry. On the other hand, the old world is not so desparately far away. A weekend trip can bring its virtues before our eyes again.

Tomorow, I'll try to put words to how these lines are skewed across time. It was a deep conversation we had on this, my love. I hope I can do it justice. Maybe you will have to help me with it.