Two Crows Joy, Prologue
A/N: I will be posting the first chapter probably tomorrow evening.
One crow sorrow, two crows joy
Three crows a girl, four crows a boy
Five crows silver, six crows gold
Seven crows a secret never to be told
Eight crows a wish, nine crows a kiss,
Ten crows a time of joyous bliss.
--American folk rhyme
(from the “Columns” section of the New York Post, December 2, 1983)
CITY GAL
Adventures of an Urban Expatriate
by Liz Baskerville
My name is Liz, and I’m an urban expatriate.
I live and work on a cattle ranch in a small New England town. I swear to God, this is where they come to shoot postcards. There are white church steeples, flags waving on Main Street and concerts in the town square. Kids play stickball on the quiet residential streets and every Sunday there's a brunch picnic at someone's farm. Sometimes it feels surreal, like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” I keep waiting for the facades to be pushed aside to reveal the seamy underbelly, but behind the bucolic exterior all I’ve found so far is an equally bucolic interior.
A year ago I was just like you. I wore my tennis shoes to pound the pavement from my sixth-floor walkup to my office, carrying my pumps in my bag. I’d grab what I now laughingly call a “lunch break” at my desk, wolfing down a salad and mainlining Diet Coke. I’d elbow my way into crowded subway cars, shove through crowds of pedestrians, and risk life and limb hailing taxicabs. Even so, I loved my life. It was exciting. I felt energized by the city, and it made me feel so hip and urbane.
But now that it’s gone, I don’t miss it.
I came here last summer to do a brief story, and that's all I expected. How I came to live here is a story in itself. The short version is that just after my visit, my life fell apart in spectacular fashion. The men who own the ranch where I now live, Jack and Ennis, picked me up off the floor and helped me reassemble myself. I don’t know what I did to deserve their friendship, but they’ve made me part of their family and their business. I work in the office, and I live in a bungalow on the property with Junior, Ennis’s college-aged daughter. I have my own horse, and I can ride her whenever I like. I eat a home-cooked meal almost every day. Peter, my gentleman friend, is the local country doctor…and yes, he makes house calls. The mayor drops by to have a beer from time to time, and if we’re feeling sociable, we all head down to the river park and eat sandwiches on the grass while we watch the kids play Frisbee. I'm learning things I never thought I'd want to know, like how to knit and make homemade bread. Jack is teaching me how to fly-fish, and Ennis is teaching me how to shoot straight.
When the sun goes down, I can see every star at night. Sometimes Peter and I drive up to the highest hill in town and lie on the roof of his car so we can look upwards into the heavens until everything spins and it feels like we’re shooting up towards those lights. When I go to sleep at night, the only sounds I hear are the cattle and the crickets, and when I wake up in the morning, all I smell is coffee.
It’s Ennis who calls me “city gal.” He means it jokingly, but he’s not wrong. I am a city gal, and I’m still getting used to all of this. Nothing that’s happened to me has been what I expected, and each week in this space, I’ll hope to share something of it with all of you who are still living that city life that I never thought I wouldn't miss.
Next Chapter
One crow sorrow, two crows joy
Three crows a girl, four crows a boy
Five crows silver, six crows gold
Seven crows a secret never to be told
Eight crows a wish, nine crows a kiss,
Ten crows a time of joyous bliss.
--American folk rhyme
(from the “Columns” section of the New York Post, December 2, 1983)
CITY GAL
Adventures of an Urban Expatriate
by Liz Baskerville
My name is Liz, and I’m an urban expatriate.
I live and work on a cattle ranch in a small New England town. I swear to God, this is where they come to shoot postcards. There are white church steeples, flags waving on Main Street and concerts in the town square. Kids play stickball on the quiet residential streets and every Sunday there's a brunch picnic at someone's farm. Sometimes it feels surreal, like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” I keep waiting for the facades to be pushed aside to reveal the seamy underbelly, but behind the bucolic exterior all I’ve found so far is an equally bucolic interior.
A year ago I was just like you. I wore my tennis shoes to pound the pavement from my sixth-floor walkup to my office, carrying my pumps in my bag. I’d grab what I now laughingly call a “lunch break” at my desk, wolfing down a salad and mainlining Diet Coke. I’d elbow my way into crowded subway cars, shove through crowds of pedestrians, and risk life and limb hailing taxicabs. Even so, I loved my life. It was exciting. I felt energized by the city, and it made me feel so hip and urbane.
But now that it’s gone, I don’t miss it.
I came here last summer to do a brief story, and that's all I expected. How I came to live here is a story in itself. The short version is that just after my visit, my life fell apart in spectacular fashion. The men who own the ranch where I now live, Jack and Ennis, picked me up off the floor and helped me reassemble myself. I don’t know what I did to deserve their friendship, but they’ve made me part of their family and their business. I work in the office, and I live in a bungalow on the property with Junior, Ennis’s college-aged daughter. I have my own horse, and I can ride her whenever I like. I eat a home-cooked meal almost every day. Peter, my gentleman friend, is the local country doctor…and yes, he makes house calls. The mayor drops by to have a beer from time to time, and if we’re feeling sociable, we all head down to the river park and eat sandwiches on the grass while we watch the kids play Frisbee. I'm learning things I never thought I'd want to know, like how to knit and make homemade bread. Jack is teaching me how to fly-fish, and Ennis is teaching me how to shoot straight.
When the sun goes down, I can see every star at night. Sometimes Peter and I drive up to the highest hill in town and lie on the roof of his car so we can look upwards into the heavens until everything spins and it feels like we’re shooting up towards those lights. When I go to sleep at night, the only sounds I hear are the cattle and the crickets, and when I wake up in the morning, all I smell is coffee.
It’s Ennis who calls me “city gal.” He means it jokingly, but he’s not wrong. I am a city gal, and I’m still getting used to all of this. Nothing that’s happened to me has been what I expected, and each week in this space, I’ll hope to share something of it with all of you who are still living that city life that I never thought I wouldn't miss.
Next Chapter