We’re moving on this morning. It has been a bittersweet reunion with Knoxville; sometimes you can’t go home. It is interesting how some of the things I liked about Portland when I moved there in 1994 was really part of a larger movement and not just about the west coast – the place I held as the great Mecca of all things cool and progressive. Some of those same things exist here and everywhere across the US. I still prefer the anonymitity I enjoy living in a city with many like-minded people, but there is also some loss of community in that. Still, it is easier to live in a city where I am one of many moms with tattoos and not someone upon which to cast sideways glances and who startles the other moms at the park. I was exhausted from swimming against the cultural current and was tired of being the “weirdo”. In Portland, I blend into the status quo.
I think what I have to resolve is that I am no longer a southerner. I am only sort of from the south anyway. My father is in the army and we moved around my whole life. Even as an adult I kept in the habit of storing things in boxes and moving every few years even if it was just to the apartment down the street. I still have a hard time putting holes in the wall to hang pictures because I can’t make any permanent changes. As a result, I’ve been looking for “home” my whole life. I remember crying inconsolably as a child and just wanting to go home.
But you are home, my mother would say.
Even I didn’t know what I meant at the time. I guess I just wanted things to be the same for a terminal designation of time.
Being here now feels a little like being the bastard child, the outsider, the Yankee-go-home. I never wanted to live in Tennessee when I put there in 7th grade. I was miserable, but it was the place I remained throughout the duration of Junior and High School (we didn’t call it “Middle School” back then). I even stayed in Tennessee for college until the first opportunity presented for escape. Once out of the south, being from the south provided an identity in the homongenous northwest where few people are natives. I banded with other ex-pats and settled into a niche. I always meant to make it to California, but when I went to work for the regional planning government as a graphic design intern, I fell deep in love with the well designed antics of Portland. And once I met my husband and gave birth to my children there, I went native.
Back in the south, my southern identity seems false. As I entered Kentucky I immediately re-affected my accent, but it was more like knowing a foreign language. There have even been a few times when I honestly could not understand what someone said to me because of their speech. And now here for the last several days, the novelty is wearing thin. Once again I feel displaced. I imagine grappling with this identity crisis is like integrating the various and sundry personas of someone with disassociative identity disorder.
My friends have been good to us and I can only offer the return in kindness for future travel. It is time to be on the road again. We mark our heading for a brief jaunt into Georgia and then to Nashville and Memphis. I have an old shoulder injury that is proving to be a real problem. I’ve had a torn rotator cuff for years and I think I have made it worse somehow with the repetitive motions of driving. It hurts like the Charles Dickens.
I know Knoxvegas was a bit of a bust for you (and I understand why) but just so you know this morning at our little park T picked up a stick and walked over and started banging it on the green post of the swings and then looked up at me and said "BEA!" and laughed...
Posted by: mamatried | October 14, 2008 at 09:12 AM
Knoxville is nice place for me, i was lived there for almost 2 years.Thanks for sharing this topic.
-Ella
Posted by: louisville apartments | January 20, 2009 at 12:48 AM