Where the road leads

I've heard that some of you have missed seeing new posts from me and so I figured I'd best get right to writing one. The last thing I wanted to do was OVER post but I suppose under posting is just as bad.

I'm still in Nashville.  Man, I can't believe how much it has changed in just three months.  I drove down the street near our local golf course and saw 3 new homes!  It was amazing. There are several huge cranes downtown that seem to be pulling buildings up out of the ground like inverted taper roots.  Guess that night time soap Nashville is drawing a crowd to this fine little city.  It would be easy for me to stay here in Nashville or to have stayed in NY for that matter because both are comfortable.  Yet are comfort and complacency too close of bed partners?  Questions, questions.

 A funny thing happened today.  I was running the water in the kitchen sink waiting for it to warm up so I could wash dishes and I laughed out loud.  In the 3 minutes it took for the water to get warm I realized that I had just let more water run down the drain than I used in an entire day on the mountain.  Hell, I probably took two baths in the amount of water I wasted-and just to switch on a light or the HEAT!  What luxuries.  How many of us give any of these things a second thought?  Now I've always had a soft spot for my washing machine (don't you have an appliance you thank each time you use it?) but the awareness of the conveniences that surround me was intensified because of living with so few of those luxuries on the mountain.

There is something else I've noticed since I've been back in civilization and that is the amount of time and money I spend shopping.  Without a doubt my feminine DNA is alive and well because it's a total nuts and berries thing.  In NY I hunted for wild mushrooms, picked apples and looked for sorrel.  Here in the city I scour Goodwill for just the right t-shirt, Radio Shack for a 1.5 amp fuse and Big Lots for the best buy on cat litter. It's weird because I wonder which world I belong in?

I use to work so hard to create just the right life and I did.  I did what it took and had everything I wanted.  At my class reunion a few years ago I remember feeling quite smug because I was there-pursuing music in Nashville, a beautiful home and married to the love of my life.  And now?  Now, I sleep in a trailer named Pork Chop parked in a friends' driveway or at a roadside Loves if I can't find a camp ground or I get the luxury of sleeping in a bed someone loans me; in NY I bummed showers from friends and stole apples for goodness sake; I washed my body in a cup of water and used a 5 gallon bucket for a toilet.  Now all of this is by choice of course.  I could have done what it took to keep my home, I could have built a career and maybe even have found a paramour here in Nashville.  It was my choice and I know it but still, when someone calls you a vagabond you have to wonder if you're on the right path!



Oh, I am on the right road.  I know it.  I know it because life is short and things change.  I won't be on this road forever.  Just a few years ago I was 18 and graduating High School, the next day I was 50 and divorced, for the second time.  One reason I don't question what I'm doing as much is because over Thanksgiving I saw my mom.  It was nice but it was difficult.  Bit by bit the world of a woman who as a newlywed, left a tiny mid-west town (pop. 90) on a bus and headed to Atlanta GA in 1945; a woman who later took an army freighter to Japan, on her own, with a new baby and one on the way.  Bit by bit my moms' world is getting smaller and smaller and it's sad.  Getting old and sick happens to all of us... Though I don't know where this road will lead, I do know that I must take it.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and I, I took the road less traveled by
and that has made all the difference"

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Robert Frost