I am 39, a woman, large, and of German and Scotch-Irish
decent. I was raised in Logansport,
Louisiana but all my people are from Keatchie.
My family has been in this area for about 5 or 6 generations. My husband Jay and I live on about 22 acres
in northern Caddo parish, which is in Northwest Louisiana, USA. We have a farm with, as of this writing, 6
dogs, 3 goats and a pig. Those numbers
change frequently. I live in a trailer
about 600 feet off of the main road. I
life so far back that I cannot get internet at my house, as the cable man told
us, “we cannot give you internet as the signal would be too degraded.” As for satellite internet, I do not have a
clear view of the Southern sky and have been told I would have to cut my trees,
something I refuse to do. Now Juno, who
lives in the house in front of me, is only about 300 feet off the road and has
cable internet!
I am also plagued with a cell phone problems, as in they
don’t work out here. I get one bar on my
cell phone in my yard. I have to leave
the property and drive about 3 miles, towards the interstate before it will
really work well. And what is worse is the house phone is based off a cell
signal, so it does not always ring when someone calls, or I can talk for about
5 minutes before I lose my signal, or my personal favorite, you go to dial out
and you have no signal. Ugh!!! I am lucky I have a tablet that picks up an
internet signal, but I just have to go outside to use it.
So my stories are typed up on an old IBM think pad, that
someone gave me some years ago, and now refuses to connect to the internet. I
am typing in Microsoft Word 7, and listening to James Taylor’s Before this world. I try to write
every day. My stories are saved to a Gig
stick. In a few days I will drive the 7
miles into the closest town, go to the local library and upload these to my
blog. This is why I post so many stories
at one time. You are getting a week’s
worth of writing at a time.
Out my window I can see my porch, my car, my flags, onward
to the goat pen and barn, a little farther to Juno’s house, and then finally I
can see a tiny portion of the road and some cars as they drive by. Our place is heavily wooded. We have lots of wild life and lots of wights
or fae.
Have you ever seen a movie called “Conagher?” It’s a great movie if you get the chance to
see it. In it is a lonely widow woman, Evie. She is so isolated that she begins to write and
ties these bits of writing onto tumbleweeds.
She says in the end, “I had to talk to someone.” I agree. My life is very isolated. I often do not leave my farm for days at a
time. At first it was because we were
tending animals, then it became because I didn’t have the gas money. I may see no one for days but my husband,
Juno and her partner. Trips into the big
town of Shreveport take a while to get to, and then we never know if my anxiety
is going to be good enough that day to go or not.
I try to write every day, but some days that just does not
happen. Most days it does. I have never written this much in my
life. I started writing about age 12;
when my teacher told me I had the gift.
I never believed it, because there was another girl in my class who
could write circles around me. Over the
years I have written when the muse descended.
I’ve written short stories, tried to start novels, and even got about
half way through writing a book. But one
night I burned it all, and gave it back to Gods. Telling them I no longer wanted this burden,
to please find someone else to write these things.
There was a time in my life, between Mike and Jay that I
wrote an article in the local news paper called, “The Prodigal Daughter.” It talked about the news in Keatchie, but
also there were stories of my life. I
published one 500 to 700 word article a week, and some weeks it was hard to
write that much. I began to have a fan
following and I began to understand I did have the gift.
That was the last major writing I did. I am now writing, on average 1000+ words a
day. In eight days I have written eight
articles, with titles for four more. I
have never, ever done this! The only
thing I can think is it is the Buspar.
My anxiety level has finally gone down enough that I have time and space
in my brain for this. And it just all
keeps pouring out.
I came up with the title of “The unexpected life,” because I
never expected to live this long. There
were times in my life when I believed I would be an academic. As a child I wanted to be an oceanographer
and later, during college, I dreamed of becoming an anthropology
professor. During those days I never
dreamed I would one day run a farm or make a living dog grooming. Living the life I live now has definitely
been unexpected.
If I had talked to 14 year old me I would never have
believed that I would ever marry, moved away from my family, or even be alive
25 years later. Like so many with
depression I felt my life would be short, and I have never planned for anything
more than a few weeks in advance. There
is an old saying, “if I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have
planned better or taken better care of myself.”
Now almost 40 I am looking at a life that I hope to go on another 20 or
30 years if I am lucky.
I am coming to the end of my child bearing years. Many of my friends from high school are
already grandparents. You now know, or
will know from later articles that I am infertile. I have finally given up hope. I have begun to break up my collection of
baby items I have kept all these years.
Family heirlooms are now going to be passed to other family
members. What hurts the most is I have
no one to pass my knowledge along to. No
one to tell my stories to and no one to sing songs too. No one who will remember Jay and me after we
are gone. No one will put us on their
altars and bring us treats on our birthdays.
We will just be gone, but I guess that is the lament of many childless
couples. But maybe if I keep writing and
posting we might have a little piece of immortality, living on in
cyberspace.
Ilsa
No comments:
Post a Comment