The Theory of Relativity

I am trying hard to process the last two weeks of my life. Now as we travel back to Portland, my mind wanders to the responsibilities and obligations of home while I categorize the events along this journey.

We’re stopped in Albuquerque for a two-day stand still while I regroup and gear up for home. I was just looking at the map and realized we have gone through 16 states with one more to go before we start backtracking. (Those are physical states of our great union, not emotional states - I can’t even count those yet.) In chronological order we have driven through:

Oregon
Idaho
Utah
Wyoming
Colorado
Kansas
Missouri
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Tennessee
Georgia
(Back to Tennessee)
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Texas
New Mexico

We’ll head through Arizona on Friday before repeating the first three.

I have seen many old friends and family along the way, which puts time and space into a perspective I only try to understand. It’s been discombobulating to say the least. When I left Portland two and a half weeks ago, fall had begun to lay its colorful exchange of seasons as the northern hemisphere pivoted away from the sun; but as we traveled across the continental divide, we fought the revolution of the earth and chased the summer warmth still generously spread in the south. Autumn in Memphis feels like summer in Portland and we stretched the lifecycle of this summer’s faded wardrobe eager to be put away back home.

Moving through time zones was also confusing, as I had to keep resetting my clock on the car. At one point each of my electronic devices displayed a different zone: Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern time. Thankfully, the magic forces at work inside my iPhone automatically matched me from the correct location to time zone.

My tenuous grip on reality was challenged in many ways on this journey. I am thankful my children are with me to anchor me to my identity in Portland. Otherwise I could have floated into the ether of many other places, of times. Memphis felt the most like home and 16 years collapsed in the span of 20 short minutes. If it had not been for my 3 year-old reminders, I could have easily forgotten my present life and resume the past with aplomb. Many things felt different and many things had changed, but I eased into a worn groove without the slightest protest. I was surrounded by familiar sights and moments trapped in amber. Even my body remembered the city streets as I turned without knowing where I was going. This was not the dead reckoning I use to navigate with my keen sense of direction; this was a physical memory only a little rusty without use. I knew my way around as if a switch was flipped and it was only when confronted by a street name doubled in Portland when I would come to and become disoriented.

When I first arrived in Memphis, I was astounded by how thick an accent everyone had. Long round vowels rolling off tongues made familiar faces seem foreign as I searched behind the worry lines for recognition. As the days slowed to an off road pace, the lingering syllables seemed to stop their stretching and everyone began to speak clearly.
How strange, I thought, that their accents have faded.
It was not until I was talking to G on the phone and heard my twangy refrain echoing from a cell tower that I realized I had resumed a language lost. In Portland my accent only drawls out of the bottom of my second beer. Even now, two days out of the south, I can hear it against the LA/ television affected speak as we inch closer to the west coast.

Mama Tried comforted me in my southern crisis: It is good to visit people who knew you when you were young. It was good; it is nice to remember being young. They remind you that who you were is who you are. I once was someone else. I had a different name. Not just my last name, but my first as well. A nickname that family figured I dropped as I got older and assumed a more mature identity. Really, it was just easier to answer to my given name during roll call my freshman year at college. It seemed silly to explain a nickname bestowed by a southerly transplanted grandmother from the country. I used to not be her anymore, but I am still she. The identities integrated; I am both and all.

Comments

[mamatried]

Awww...this is so beautiful it makes me teary. I am happy that you felt at 'home' in Memphis.

Next time (HA! Kidding!) we'll go to Moonshadow and chase those ghosts (maybe we can even find that stream we swam in after getting hit by the 18 wheeler) and dump the girls and go in searching of a reason to the the 'cheap beer dance' (I'm too old for the other).

[mamatried]

PS I have always loved that photo.