Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
I've seen nothing but Edinburghian style weather since I've been back in Michigan: clouds, gloom, sun, rain, cold, rain, wet, sun, and rain. I haven't even had time to miss the Scottish weather yet! As if this weren't enough, I'm experiencing a cultural downpouring of shock, not unlike the jolt I receive upon returning from the great West - yes, although I know it's the same country Out There, things are about as different in sunny la-la-land as they are in the old Kingdom. Like when my mother and I drove to meet my grandmother for lunch today and stopped at the top of the driveway, where we met our neighbour, who had just successfully returned to his home with a dead deer who was being carefully cleaned in his driveway. Bow hunting season has begun, he assured us, and our property is just the place to find a four-horned buck. The gruesome thing, spread out in front of the neighbour's garage in all its glory, was lifeless but intact, adding further to the heartless spectacle. Meanwhile, blood spewed from my neighbour's hand as he joyfully recounted the tale. (I knew the Highlands reminded me of the NoMish!) Later in the day, amidst chatter about the new casino in town and the latest of cupid's arrows, which seem to fall as liberally from the skies of the Northland as does October rain, I found myself once again wondering what I'm doing here. I am from here - I've lived longer in this town than in all the other places I've lived combined, yet I often feel like such a stranger. Such a stranger in a place where the dental hygienists don't know where Edinburgh is, a place where a fifteen-minute walk is automatically transposed into a 3-minute drive, a place where conservativism is at its all-American height. I mean, I'm no flaming liberal (and in fact to most liberals fall quite conservatively on the spectrum), but to conservatives here I am liberally out-of-line, and I'm not just talking politically. I'm still not sure what to make of all these things... I just always feel on the outside.
Meanwhile, the rain continues, and sometimes it's best when it pours. I went through my grandmother's closet this afternoon, a miniature Mothership in itself, and came out with 4 new wedding-attending dresses, a dress-and-jacket matching set, a suit-and-skirt set, and a fabulous almost-tweed fall coat. A whole new 60s and 70s wardrobe! While my grandma and aunts googled over what I call my "vintage figure" (the optimistic way in which I refer to my 60s-and-70s-dress-hugging curves), I was suddenly struck with a grateful nostalgia, or feeling of continuity. There are some things I would never want to change about this place, and my grandmother's closet, the smell of her house, her gentle hugs, are just a few.
But finally, alas, it's a rainstorm of sorrow inside of me, for a number of relocation reasons. I know I always feel this way at the start of anything new, because it means the end of something old. It's not the new I'm resisting, it's just the change, disguised in the clothing of love for the past. Or maybe it really is.... a love that's been lost. I can never sort it out, I just know it's soggy and raw and muddy inside, and I can never figure out how to make a clean escape.
"I know I'm leaving but I don't know where to."
Meanwhile, the rain continues, and sometimes it's best when it pours. I went through my grandmother's closet this afternoon, a miniature Mothership in itself, and came out with 4 new wedding-attending dresses, a dress-and-jacket matching set, a suit-and-skirt set, and a fabulous almost-tweed fall coat. A whole new 60s and 70s wardrobe! While my grandma and aunts googled over what I call my "vintage figure" (the optimistic way in which I refer to my 60s-and-70s-dress-hugging curves), I was suddenly struck with a grateful nostalgia, or feeling of continuity. There are some things I would never want to change about this place, and my grandmother's closet, the smell of her house, her gentle hugs, are just a few.
But finally, alas, it's a rainstorm of sorrow inside of me, for a number of relocation reasons. I know I always feel this way at the start of anything new, because it means the end of something old. It's not the new I'm resisting, it's just the change, disguised in the clothing of love for the past. Or maybe it really is.... a love that's been lost. I can never sort it out, I just know it's soggy and raw and muddy inside, and I can never figure out how to make a clean escape.
"I know I'm leaving but I don't know where to."