looking down a fork in the road
I finally succumbed to the pop culture phenomenon that is Twilight tonight, at the insistence and pleading of my ten year old cousin Faith, and all I could think after it was over was how much better the movie would have been if Edward wouldn't have been in it. I guess that doesn't leave much of a story to tell, but those other bits - her fragile fumbling father, her relationship with Jacob, even her friendships at school - felt so shortchanged in favor of melodramatic codependency on a stalker who can't even act. I was more interested in the Bella all those other people cared about, and was interested to find out why they did. And I also, depressingly, felt that any decent feminist strides Buffy made have now been set back at least thirty years. Team Jacob all the way, man.
As I left, I hugged Faith's mother Amanda, who is my age, goodbye and told her that I admired the life she's built for herself. For all that it is so different from my own life, I was being completely honest. When I'd shown up at their house, a half mile down a dirt road in the dark woods of rural Pennsylvania, I'd followed their herding dogs to the horse barn. I found Amanda and Faith tossing bales of alfalfa and timothy out of their Tundra into the 20 degree night air, stacking them up while dancing to the tinny Britney Spears song on the radio in the cobwebby corner. I patted their three horses, their two border collies, their long-haired cat, and felt at home in my red-and-black plaid wool shirt, and wished for a Carhartt jacket. Faith ran ahead and maneuvered the tractor over to the wood pile to collect the night's firewood, and I thought that there are infinitely worse ways to spend a life. This felt right to at least a part of me, an important part, the part writing this in a farmhouse next to my sleeping mother, covered in a sixty year old hand-stitched quilt and letting a barn kitten romp over me.
***
As I left, I hugged Faith's mother Amanda, who is my age, goodbye and told her that I admired the life she's built for herself. For all that it is so different from my own life, I was being completely honest. When I'd shown up at their house, a half mile down a dirt road in the dark woods of rural Pennsylvania, I'd followed their herding dogs to the horse barn. I found Amanda and Faith tossing bales of alfalfa and timothy out of their Tundra into the 20 degree night air, stacking them up while dancing to the tinny Britney Spears song on the radio in the cobwebby corner. I patted their three horses, their two border collies, their long-haired cat, and felt at home in my red-and-black plaid wool shirt, and wished for a Carhartt jacket. Faith ran ahead and maneuvered the tractor over to the wood pile to collect the night's firewood, and I thought that there are infinitely worse ways to spend a life. This felt right to at least a part of me, an important part, the part writing this in a farmhouse next to my sleeping mother, covered in a sixty year old hand-stitched quilt and letting a barn kitten romp over me.
***