There's a Tear in My Beer

In the past few weeks, I have noticed that I have been listening to country music a lot.  Spotify suggested it, I clicked on it, and that has been my go-to car listening for weeks now.  I haven't listened to country music since the first year I lived in Texas and most songs seem to revolve around the artist spelling words out for us or songs about fun rivers and county fairs.   This Spotify-made list has classic songs from Dolly and Willie on there as well as new artists.  I cannot get the song "Last Night" by Morgan someone out of my head.  The song starts with the chorus!  Bold move! "Last night we let the liquor talk", I mean who can't relate to that? "I can't remember everything we said...".  Can this man see into my troubled soul and know that when I wake up hot and sweaty in the middle of the night after drinking too much I immediately wonder where my purse is and what came out of my mouth?  "but we said it all."; that is me any day of the week, drinking does not have to happen.  As I wondered why I was listening to this song yet again, I began to put it all together.  I am coming to the end of my Texas era, it is only natural in would be country music playing me out.

In four days, I will move to IL to be with my person!!  I am so excited!  We both have jobs!  A nice apartment! He has spent the summer finding hikes and walks and places to shop at and go.  I can't wait to be there with him and do this life with him.  I am giddy, and anticipatory, and excited!  SO excited! But, I am also sad.  And I know I can be two things at once because my friend Liz has told me that two things can be true at the same time.  And because I am.  I have lived in Texas longer than I lived in NY.  Like a decade longer.  I am not one of those people who say, or have cross-stitched on a pillow in my home, that I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.  I don't say it because it is annoying and I don't have it cross-stitched because the only thing cross-stitched in my home says "Sucks to Suck", because it does.  I also don't quote Davy Crockett and say "You may all go to hell and I am going to Texas" because that is such a sick 1800's burn only Crockett should say it and because, well, Texas didn't end so well for him.(ahem, Alamo)

I am sad I couldn't put picture with Crockett and sexy eyebrows here instead, but it wasn't free.

So while I am SO excited, I am also taking time to see how I will miss Texas.  I will miss its tacos and BBQ.  I will miss its beautiful spring weather and wildflowers.  I will miss how everyone is always speeding.  I will miss a lightning storm that lights up the sky.  I will miss a glorious sunset spreading itself over a soccer field. I will miss my cozy classroom on the third floor.  The thing I will miss most though, after tacos, is people.  People I have been friends with since my kids were little.  People I have worked with.  People who have seen me at my best and my worst.  People I shared beers and stories and holidays with.  I cannot even start to think about how I will miss being close by for my kids.  

I have spent a good portion of the last week running around town and seeing people before I leave.  We talk and laugh and cry a little.  We hug and say "see you soon".  I didn't get to see the first friend I made in Texas so long ago when we were both paid $6/hr to dress like we were going to a funeral and work in a hotel, but Mark will always be my first friend in Texas and will always be my friend in Texas.  And I realize that all these people I am hugging goodbye will still be my friends in Texas.  And I can come back at any time and see them and eat tacos!

It is hard to close out an era.  It is sad to not see people you are used to seeing.  However, you can't have adventure if you stay in the same place.  And in this case, adventure also means love.  Sigh.  Swoon!  One friend said "it is like a fairy tale!" and another said "Man, you really wore him down".  Again, two things true at the same time!

I came to Texas a 20-year old kid with big bangs and believing that Taco Bell was Mexican food.  I have learned and grown and moved from all around Dallas to all around Austin.  I have marveled at a beautiful Texas hike and cursed the August sun.  I have raised my kids here.  I have really lived a good portion of my life here and a good life here. People have asked why I moved to Texas and I tell them that it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Thirty years later, I can say it was a great idea.

Trip, Trap, Trip, Trap

On a trip to see my sister and family in NC last week, we went on a very sweaty hike.  It was a pretty NC hike forested with green trees and carpeted with pine needles. There was some incline and decline and a lake and a whisper of a breeze off the lake which we needed desperately because while it was not incredibly hot, it was insanely humid.  There were a couple of small bridges to cross and as we got to the first one, I did what I always do when crossing a small foot bridge: I said "Trip, trap, trip, trap" and my sister laughed right away and knew I was talking about the troll from "Three Billy Goats Gruff".  (which if you have not read this amazing piece of literature daily to children from the ages of 2-5, you are missing out on a grumpy old troll and some very smart goats and the compulsion to say "trip, trap, trip, trap" any and every time you cross a footbridge.) We hiked on and at the end of the three miles everyone was glad we had a small adventure and I said I only hated five minutes of that hike and we got ice cream to celebrate all the calories we had sweated off.  A perfect Sunday!

At the airport the next day, I was thinking about this trip and other trips to see my sister.  It is always a good trip.  We eat good food and drink great wine and do small adventures and, as it turns out, a lot of sweating.  Hot yoga, hot hikes, etc.  On a trip prior to this one, we drank alot, alot of red wine at night and the next morning went to aerial yoga.  There I was, hungover, and hanging from a silk scarf from the sky while contorting my body into weird positions.  I would file that experience under "do not recommend."  That trip, like this one, was a good trip where I spent time with some of my favorite people.

As I waited at the gate for my plane though, I couldn't help but feel a little trapped.  Trapped among too many people, trapped waiting for things I was not in control of, trapped waiting for a restroom.  I only fly Southwest so I was in trappings that I knew, but traps nonetheless. Trapped waiting for my letter and number.  Trapped waiting for people who haven't flown in twenty years to board and stow their luggage.  I like to sit closer to the front so I often take a middle seat and am trapped between two people I have never seen before.  On both flights, both sets of people were real armrest-hoggers so I felt even more caged. 

Squished between two healthy strangers, I closed my eyes and thought about my Western adventure last year.  A trip to see family and then trapped with the rest of America to seek adventures.  Trip, trap, trip, trap.  I didn't want to experience the beauty of nature or national monuments with other people and especially not hoards of people who obviously hadn't left their own home in ten years and were raising feral children.  I am not sure when the rest of America became so abhorrent to me but it does make me wish I could plan trips when everyone else is too busy to go.  As I write this, I realize I am very similar to the grumpy old troll wondering who is trip, trapping over his bridge.  In my case, I am wondering why all of these people are here too.

Trip, trap, trip, trap.  In order to take a trip, you risk the trap.   Maybe it's the trap of the interstate, or plane delays, or forced small talk with a chatty seat mate.  Maybe it's overpriced food or wondering why you can't have an entire can of Diet Coke and only get that Dixie cup full on the plane.  Maybe it's too many people wanting to do the same things or the hurry up and wait that makes you feel trapped.  In those trapped moments, I like to close my eyes and think of the trip ahead of me or behind me.   When I open them, I can see good things happening in the sea of humanity ahead of me and that helps: people helping strangers, families laughing together, an older couple still holding hands.  

When I fly to Chicago next week to see my person and am so impatient with the trap because I just want to be there and with him already, I will try to think more of the TRIP than the trap.  Because, really, the TRIP always outweighs the trap.  TRIP, trap, TRIP, trap.  Time with people you love, some minor inconveniences, taking adventures and making memories, crying kids on planes, wanting to die at aerial yoga, no arm rests.  I think that in addition to saying "trip, trap, trip, trap" at every footbridge in my life, I will also start saying it as I walk down the jetbridge to my plane.  If nothing else, it will make me think of reading to my kids when they were little or my sister.  And, if I say it out loud, people might think I am really weird and not sit next to me and I can get an armrest!

Always worth the trip and the traps.