Totems

Leaving the marriage wasn't that difficult.

I'd been alone thirty years with him.  But moving to the southern Appalachians, now that changed me.  Forever.
 

It was 2001.  May 1st. The sky was azure with the puffiest white clouds and the greenest grass possible.  Now I was truly in unfamiliar territory.  A pioneer woman moving west.  Back then I couldn't read a blackberry winter or know when a flame azalea was about to burst open with color. 

Living in the cattle chute wasn't really life.  The sides were always closing in; the tube ever lengthening.

"You guys are boring."

Children have a way of cutting to the chase.  I knew she was right.  We were boring.  I was boring for allowing it in the first place.  Sometimes you do what you do when there are children involved.  I like to think I wouldn't do it again. But that is how it was so long ago.

"I'm going to be so happy here," I said.

The lease on the apartment was up and I was more than anxious to begin the next adventure.  This house wasn't even ready for occupancy.  Without a Certificate of Occupancy, the plumber would not turn on the water. The builders needed another three weeks to complete the work, mostly mechanical stuff.

I'd moved into a trucker motel just up the road.  It was close to my house but not too safe to come out at night.  And hardly the kind of place to which I was accustomed or would allow myself to ever be accustomed to reside in. 

I was a long way from Princeton.