My wife told me the other day that I should not say things like, "I hate Texas." She said I partucularly should not say them in front of real Texas-loving Texans (like some of the people we know here). She reminded me that we had just spent a couple of days enjoying a friend's farm near Tarpley, Texas, and that the friend is one of those real Texans. She said I should say, "I am not a Texan" or maybe, "I will never be a Texan" and let it go at that. And while those things are true, after a decade here I am not a Texan and never will be because I really don't like Texas. But in deference to her I will not say I hate it. The truth is that she doesn't like it any more than I do, but she is nicer about it. We need to leave. We have known that for a long time. And plans were in place.
In fact, we figured we would be back in New Mexico by now. We were moving forward. The Austin house was on the market. It was ready for viewing (and some people came to see it). We had begun to pack. But things happened the way things do. My wife's mother had a heart valve replaced along with some unanticipated bypass surgery and never recovered. Sometimes she seemed a little better, but mostly she seemed worse day after day. Pneumonia, kidney failure, liver problems, circulation problems. She spent two months in intensive care in Kansas, a few days at a rehab center a long ambulance ride away in Nebraska and, after a long ambulance ride back to Kansas, one night in a hospice center where she died. My wife spent much of that time with her mother and was there when she drew her final quiet breath. It was a difficult time for Dauna, her siblings, her family, all of us. When we returned to Texas in October, grief and exhaustion filled our days and left little time or energy to prepare for the future - or for moving. We took the house off the market. We needed a place to call home and the way we see it our house and Texas are two different things. We settled in.
October became November became Thanksgiving became Christmas became the New Year. Even the happiest days were freighted with sadness of one sort or another. Living near tears is an exhausting thing. We decided a trip west might help. We put it off at the last minute. A little later we decided again to take a long drive west, but a blizzard between here and where we were going forced us to cancel our plans and sit tight (at least that is what we told ourselves). Entropy threatened to complicate inertia. Dauna still hesitated; I insisted. I reserved a motel room in Lubbock. We drove west on a Wednesday morning and arrived in Santa Fe two days - and 698.9 miles - later. That is where our old friends are and where our life should be. It helped to visit. We felt better when we drove 509.2 miles to Tucson to visit our son Nick and meet his girlfriend a few days after that. A couple of days later we left Tucson and spent two days driving 900 miles to Austin. We covered lots of bare and beautiful western miles. It felt good.
So we remain in Texas for now. And of course it is impossible to drive far enough or fast enough to outrun grief. But we have traveled 2,100 miles toward recovering the exhilarating momentum that carried us through last summer. We are not sure exactly how far we have to go to get there and get away from here. But we are back on the road again, 2,100 miles farther along than we were 10 days ago. That is a good sign.
Dauna visits Dauna's in Harper, TX.
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