Tick, Tock.
Many (most?) of the comments on my last catch-up post focused on the news that we’re leaving the ranch and moving to the L.A. area in the spring…so, a few thoughts on that.
Timing really is everything. When R. and I moved to the property five years ago, we really did think this was it. As in, forever it. I wanted to garden–seriously garden. I wanted to never want for a ripe tomato in late summer. (And if you know me well, I can literally eat dozens of garden tomatoes a day.) I wanted to plant an entire eyespace with nothing but waves of hummingbird mint. And I wanted to write and live in a place that inspired writing. I wanted to learn a new language–a language of rocks and wildflowers and birds and scrub. A language peculiar to the Southwest. A language that was rich and strange at once.
I wanted to be able to disappear into the stars at night.
I got all that. I did all that, for several years. I was very, very lucky, and I’m grateful for the ranch. But one of the lessons of motherhood is that what works–what suffices, what inspires, what transports–changes with the change of focus. When your focus becomes a little girl with the deepest brown eyes you’ve ever seen and a devilish giggle, your Mommynoia kicks in. Because, frankly, a toddler can’t climb a staircase of stones without falling–most likely, into one of the cactus lining the trail. A toddler who unapologetically grins while pulling off her shoes and socks every chance she gets can’t be trusted to live near the occasional rogue scorpion. Not to mention rattlesnake. So the beauty that once inspired becomes the burden that terrifies. The strangeness is no longer appealing. Exoticism really does mask anxiety, I guess.
Tick, tock.
A toddler needs sidewalks and (grassy) parks and playgrounds and other children to stimulate her development. She needs libraries with story hours that don’t take an hour to get to. And mom needs a coffeehouse to hang out in once in a while. A friend to walk around the block with. (And a block to walk around.) Or to call on the spur of the moment, for god’s sake. Would you roll your eyes at me if I actually admitted that I didn’t realize at my first blush of motherhood that moms need breaks every once in a while? That moms need support systems? Um, yeah. I’m a bit of a habitual hermit.
So, for instance: I always took it as ideal that my office (where my computer and the internets live) is in a building separate from the main house. Down a path through the scrub. Damn dark at night, which means that I never venture there then. I thought it was great that the division of physical space mandated a division of mental space…when I left the computer every afternoon, I left it. No web cruising at random hours. No checking email right before bed. Life clearly delineated.
Only problem is, life is never clearly delineated when you have a kid. Especially, I guess, when you’re a SAHM. Diapers and a crib in my office now is a given. I crave internet access up in the kitchen, in the T.V. room, in the closet–anywhere–but we can’t pick up the signal in the house. And there’s no cable in the rural desert. And, so, my onetime haven of creativity has turned into the bane of my existence. I hate my office. I want a laptop next to my stove. I want to check email while I pee. I don’t want to have to choose between an hour on the treadmill (if I put The Bee down for her nap in her room) and an hour on the computer (if I put her down in my office) because that means making a choice between exercising the body or exercising the mind that day.
Not that any of this heralds the coming of the Apocalypse. I’ll survive. We’ll survive. But there are days when having a “grown up” house (as R. and I refer to it) instead of this eclectic kingdom of boulders would make things a whole lot easier. Habits need to be broken when their usefulness runs its course.
Tick, tock.
So we chose easier. Sooner than we expected to. R.’s change of professions (he’s gone to work for his father’s business, located in southern California) meant that we would move to SoCal at some point. We originally thought in three years or so. We originally thought to San Diego. But we have very close friends in Pasadena–R.’s best friend from boyhood and his artist wife–and so I dropped the idea of moving there instead, since R.’s commute to the palm tree farm would really be almost the same from either city. I crave friendship right now. I crave society.
I worry that this post is turning into a defense of the bourgeois life. Ah, well. More anxiety. We’re leasing a house rather than buying in case we get there and can’t hack it. R. has already announced that he’s going to need to “take off into the desert” every so often. And we’re not selling the ranch of rocks anytime soon (Can you imagine finding that sort of buyer in this market?…although if you know anyone who might be interested in a gussied-up, double-wide trailer on a shrine-strewn, ex-religious retreat, let me know). I have a feeling we’ll be able to hack it. I have a feeling that The Bee will thrive in the L.A. area with its cultural opportunities and its diversity. Me, too.
It is, after all, the right time for it.
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