There is a reason why I'm no good at downtime. I think too much. We're in the early stages of home buying, which has caused me to deeply question the whole idea of home buying. I heard someone declare ecstatically the other day, "We're in Dublin schools, but with Columbus taxes!" and I died a little in my soul. I think the deal of growing up with nothing is both that it causes you not to be terribly concerned about having nothing, but also to question the whole process of going from nothing to something. I remember my mom working terrible jobs and delivering eight paper routes every morning just to own a beat up Pinto station wagon and rent a run down two bedroom apartment. Why bother? We have three young kids. We should have a house, a stable life, buy into a predictably good school system. Or, you know, move to Paris. Which ever.
When I called Larry to tell him about the Paris plan (which follows quickly on the heels of the Naples, Florida plan), he sounded both terrified and annoyed. "Why Paris now?" he asked. "Just kidding," I said. But I'm not. The only bad part about Paris is I don't speak French. And also that I have no real desire to live in Paris, having never been further outside the US than the Canada side of Niagara Falls. But my oldest daughter wants to go to Paris, has declared an obsession with all things Parisian (or faux-Parisian, as in the "France" section of Disney). Someone has to have the passion, and the twelve year old wins the day.
We'll never be rich. I have way too many degrees, and Larry too few. So, if we can't be rich, why are we playing at all? Better to back out of the whole deal, to my mind. Why buy a house anyway?
"Security," is Larry's answer. "Stability." But I've never had security, so I have no idea what he's talking about. I don't buy it.
I had a weird dream earlier today. I've reached the point in life (too early, I think, in my mid thirties) when all the people who stood before me in line are gone. My parents, my grandparents. The dream I had was me chasing my grandpa through the church he and my grandma attended in Mason City, Iowa. He was walking fast for an old guy, but my grandfather was always powerful. We got to a point in the church (not the real church, the dream church) where my grandfather was standing below me and I had to either jump or go down a slide. But the slide had a line of children, a line so long it seemed endless, so I jumped. And, as with any dream jump, you either wake before you hit the ground, or somehow air transforms and you float gently down. As I did. Then I turned around and saw my middle daughter standing on the platform I had just abandoned, looking down at me, waiting for me to tell her which way to go.
"How did she get down before?" I asked my grandpa.
"She jumped," he answered. But I knew if she jumped the dream rules would stop applying and she would come crashing into me, heavy and damaging. And, following unfair dream rules, just as I decided there was no other choice, she would have to jump, and I would just have to cushion the fall, I woke up.
I woke up with a fierce desire to write for the first time since my mom got sick with lung cancer in summer of 2010. Not write about the dream, but to finish the novel I had started writing right before my mom got sick. Suddenly the problem that had stymied me before was entirely solvable. I just (isn't it always the case), had to kill one the characters quicker. My mom just died. I throw that in in case anyone doubts that my mom just died is the whole point here. This reminds me of something Erin McGraw had once said to me about another story: "Oh, the death absolutely CANNOT be the point of this story. It just can't."
I'm supposed to be a writer. I'm not, of course. And, writing being one of the few professions you cannot claim without actively pursuing, I'm left with the question of the day: Paris or Naples?
No comments:
Post a Comment