Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.– Thich Nhat Hanh
Photo by the author – image enhanced with the Waterlogue App
We got our produce delivery today and the box included four bananas. I still have two bananas left from the previous week. Bananas, it seems, are not in short supply. I haven’t been able to find flour anywhere, and I’ve gone so far as to put a 50 lb bag in my online cart at a restaurant supply store. I would have ordered it too, despite the $20 delivery fee. But it was sold out.
I see folks selling flour on Ebay, for twice the price at the grocery store – if the grocery stores actually had flour in stock. I’m not a charitable person. I’m wishing weevils on all those Ebay capitalists.
Andrew suggested we plant wheat, but our balcony is too shady for large scale farming. I’m trusting my 5 lb bag of flour will last until the current crisis is over.
I have, however, started a crop of a different sort.
Sprouts!
Andrew and I are fortunate. We both have jobs and we’ve been working from home, our only inconvenience the inability to just run out and purchase things. This would be tolerable and healthy for our budget, if it weren’t for the stress the loss of control brings.
This morning as I unpacked our produce box and considered the two sad bananas left sitting on the counter from the previous week, I decided I wanted banana pudding.
“Do you want to go to the store and buy ‘Nilla wafers?” Andrew asked.
I considered the logistics of grocery shopping. Gloves, mask, hand sanitizer, dodging crowds of shoppers who can’t seem to grasp the concept of social distancing – “No thanks,” I said.
I decided instead to make the entire dish from scratch. It turned out pretty well, plus I had the satisfaction of creating something I wanted. Who knew cooking could bring back some sense of control to my life? (I guess the people buying up all the flour already knew about the power of baking.)
I found the recipe for my made-from-scratch banana pudding here: I Am Baker
I’m trying my own sourdough starter next, acting on faith that flour will be back in stock soon.
I hope everyone is safe and snug at home. I’ve given up the search for toilet paper. Instead I hear my mother’s ghost warning me each time I approach the bathroom. Toilet paper must have cost more in the 70s.
“Don’t use so much! Stop spinning that roll!”
Mom grew up in the Great Depression. She told me they used the Sears Roebuck catalog, but not the slick pages. Also they’d save corn cobs after they ate the corn, then stock the outhouse with the dried cobs. She claimed they burned them later, for fuel.
We aren’t quite there yet, my husband Andrew and I are well provisioned with most things, except eggs and bananas. I’ve found a local 7-11 that stocks bananas so all that is left is for me to adopt a chicken and we will be ready for any apocalypse.
So what do you do all day when you shouldn’t go out?
Books
Better World Books – Purchase a used book here to help support worldwide literacy programs.
Thrift Books – Another cool site for used books. Free shipping on orders of $10 or more. They also support a prison literacy program.
Nowhere Bookshop – If you’re a fan of author Jenny Lawson you’ll be excited to shop her store before it officially opens. Order a book online and support a great independent bookseller.
Any independent bookstore in your area. Amazon will survive the pandemic but small, local stores will struggle. These places also employ staff and contribute to your local economy. Consider shopping local online before you send your money to Amazon.
Food
Farmbox – If you’re in the Dallas Fort Worth Area they deliver a selection of local organic produce. I was able to order a good variety of fruits and vegetables. If you’re outside DFW, search for local produce delivery. Chances are they will have a decent selection available and can restock faster because they are buying from area producers. There’s always 7-11 for bananas.
Imperfect Foods – I’ve just started with this service. Their first box had a very limited amount of produce available, but I was able to add yogurt, ground beef, and ground turkey at a reasonable price. Higher than my local grocery store, but I won’t have to go fight infected crowds. If you’re interested in checking them out, here’s a link for $10 off your first box – http://imprfct.us/v/terrye_3
Minimus.biz – They sell tiny travel size products. They’re out of hand sanitizer, but take a look at all the other products. I love ordering the individually packaged salad dressings for when I take my lunch to work. These will come in handy when we are allowed back in the office.
Future Learn – Take a class for free. You can purchase unlimited access or view the courses for free for their duration plus 14 days.
The Great Courses – They have a 14 Day Free Trial. Or check out your public library. Mine offers access to the Great Courses for free, through the Rb Digitial app.
Kanopy – If you run out of things to binge on Netflix, check out Kanopy. If your public library or university is a member (most are) you can stream free movies.
Audible – They’re offering free stories for children for as long as schools are closed.
Drive-in theaters – If you’re not under a stay-at-home order, you can visit an old-fashioned drive-in theater. Many are open now, but they might not be able to offer a snack bar and probably will have limited restrooms open. If you’re willing to travel and stay put in your car, you can bring your own snacks and have an adventure.
Social
Zoom – Hang out with your bookclub, writer’s group, study partners, friends and family for free video conferencing.
Postcrossing – Connect with the world the old-fashioned way, through the mail. Join here for free and they’ll give you addresses around the world. Send a postcard and you’ll be added to the list to receive one. Don’t have postcards at home? Make your own. Use up those fancy notecards, index cards, or stacks of Christmas cards you never used. Make sure anything you send meets the postal regulations for size. Order stamps here without leaving your house – USPS.com
Good luck friends in isolation, drop me a comment below and share your favorite way to spend time during the pandemic.
I wandered into the dark room at the museum and stepped through into another dimension. Sound surrounded me – soft voices lifting in song and sweet notes issuing from musical instruments. The experience of viewing The Visitors, a video art installation by Ragnar Kjartansson, haunted me long after I’d left the Dallas Museum of Art.
The piece features nine screens, eight of them showing individual musicians in separate rooms of the same house, performing the same song. They shot the ninth screen on the front porch of that house, the Rokeby mansion in New York, a historic site once owned by the Astor family.
I wandered up and down the room housing the exhibit, pausing at each projection to marvel at the beauty of the setting. The rooms in the video, with their gently fading wallpaper and antique furniture, reflected a vision of loss and regret that echoed in the lyrics of the song. Later I discovered the words were based on the poem Feminine Ways, written by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Kjartansson’s ex-wife.
The music built and swelled, rising in a crescendo then falling to whisper quiet. Standing in front of each of the life-sized screens, I felt like a voyeur, viewing ghosts instead of recordings. In one scene, a man sits on the edge of a bed, electric guitar in his lap. Behind him on the bed we see a woman’s bare back, the curve of her shoulder lifted into the lamplight. As I paused at each screen—the cello, the accordion, the pianos, the guitars—I felt as though I were the ghost, wandering through an afterlife of such intimate moments.
Art touches our soul, reminding us we are fragile and alone. At the end of the video the musicians gather in one room. They sing around the piano, the words this time joyful. One artist pops a bottle of champagne in celebration, another lights a cigar. The troupe strolls out across a broad green lawn, singing. I am left with that last image – of individual lives come together to create something beautiful.
It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m looking for Santa. Not the jolly elf in red pajamas, my Santa is a six-inch tall ceramic bank. He’s just like the one my mom had, the one she saved quarters in all year to have money for Christmas. Mine doesn’t have quarters. It came without the rubber stopper at the bottom, and any money I stashed there would fall out like it does from my wallet when Bath and Body Works has their 2-for-1 sale.
Birthday presents were purchased with S&H Green Stamps. We did all our grocery shopping on Wednesdays, double stamp day at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. The cashier would hand out a strip of the little green trading stamps, the number of stamps calculated based on the dollar amount of groceries purchased. I got to keep and redeem at the Green Stamp store any books where I had licked and stuck the stamps on the pages. I remember them tasting like spearmint, this may or may not be true.
I bought my Santa bank at an antique store in Jefferson, Texas, spurred on by a desire to replace each iconic artifact from my childhood. You know you’ve reached a certain age when every toy you ever owned is now “vintage” and “collectible.”
Every year in December my mom would bring out the bank, and I’d help her drop the coins into dusty paper wrappers. She’d pull out the stopper and pour out the quarters, a pile of clinking silver on the tabletop. Always quarters, and never dimes, nickels, or those useless bitter pennies.
I knew my parents bought my presents, but I also believed in Santa – the one with the flying reindeer. How can you believe in something and yet know it isn’t true? Have you ever looked at a triple chocolate cake and said to yourself, “I’ll just have one bite?”
I had a stocking every Christmas, and Santa always left one orange, one apple, several peppermint canes, and a handful of nuts. I’d have presents too, bought with those carefully wrapped quarters. The years went by, the name “Santa” on the gift tag replaced by “Mom” or “Dad”. We still stayed up late to watch the television newscasters predict the path of the jolly elf’s journey.
My mother loved stories, she’d act out the tales of Br’er Rabbit and recite what she remembered of Tom Sawyer’s adventures. She loved Santa and the Tooth Fairy equally. I believe she got as much of a thrill placing the gifts under the tree and the quarters under my pillow as I got joy in receiving them.
I finally located my Santa bank on top of the book shelf in our dining room. His face is familiar, and when I pick him up, I can imagine the heft he’d have filled with coins. My parents filled my childhood with the wonder of a magic elf who’d visit the good boys and girls on Christmas Eve. I wasn’t disappointed to learn the truth, because the best gift they gave me was the gift of imagination.
When I was seven years old, my parents lost me at the State Fair of Texas. Their last sight of me, I’d slipped into a crowd of folks shuffling into a garish tent on the midway. I imagine them watching as I stood in line, my hair done up in twin pony-tails in the style we called “dog ears” and my sweaty little fist clutching the ticket to the freak show.
You’d be hard pressed to find a decent freak show now. This was 1967, when no one thought it unusual or awkward to put people on display. We have the internet for that now, but in the 60s you had to show up in person. I didn’t know what to expect from the sideshow. A bright splash of colored posters flapped against the outside of the tent and promised many miracles. An alligator boy, a sword swallower, the pincushion man, the world’s ugliest woman—they all waited inside.
The last one on this list drew me in. I’d started wearing glasses, a homely set in thick tan plastic that magnified my eyes to the size of saucers. Coupled with the elastic waisted pants and polyester tops mom dressed me in, from a distance I resembled a short, middle-aged housewife. Add in my under-bite, square jaw, and the nose I grew into, and you’ll get the picture. I couldn’t wait to spot the world’s ugliest woman.
Once inside the tent I fidgeted through the first part of the show. The only audience member shorter than five feet, I faced a solid fence of adult backsides. I hopped up and down, afraid I’d miss the one act I’d wanted to see. I caught the flash of metal as the sword swallower flourished his props, and from the collective sighs and gasps as the other performers took the stage, I understood they had displayed wonderful things.
At last the slick sideshow barker announced we could all move into a curtained off area to the side of the stage. “Only one additional dollar, folks,” he said, “and you will witness a site certain to frighten children!” The barkers gaze skimmed the crowd, measuring the size of our wallets. “Any patrons with weak hearts might want to skip the act.” I dug the last of my allowance from my pocket.
Half the crowd jostled through the curtains to arrive in a roped off space the size of my living room at home. I pushed my way to the front, determined not to miss a bit of the show. We faced a wooden platform, taller than I was, and barely large enough to support the plain kitchen chair placed in the center. Another set of curtains covered the back of this makeshift stage.
“Presenting the world famous…”
I don’t remember the woman’s name, the color or length of her hair, I couldn’t guess her age. The curtains at the back of the platform parted to allow her passage onto the platform where she settled on the little chair and dropped the robe that covered her body.
There must be some mistake, I remember thinking. This was not the World’s Ugliest Woman. Extraordinary designs—red dragons, blue and yellow birds, circles and flowers and bright flourishes covered every inch of her. I supposed the parts hidden behind her bikini top and shorts were also inked. When she smiled the tattoos moved along her face, as though they held a separate life from hers. She perched on the chair, smiling down at us, her supplicants. I wondered what she thought of me, so plain, so ordinary, without a single story drawn upon my skin.
I didn’t notice the others slipping out from the tent as I stood there, entranced until the sideshow barker, with a gentle nudge, told us, “Thanks for visiting folks.”
Released onto the fairgrounds, I wandered out into the sunlight to find my mother and father standing on either side of a uniformed policeman.
“Where were you?” My mother snatched my arm, dragging me away from the dark shadow of the sideshow tent as though it might suck me back in.
For answer I waved behind us, as a new stream of fair goers exited from the front of the tent. This was where most of the group I’d been a part of had left the show, strolling out past my waiting parents. I’d appeared almost twenty minutes later, from the back of the tent.
“Never again!” My mother vowed.
That was my first, last, and only visit to the freak show. Years passed and they replaced the freak show with exhibits of bizarre animals. The two-headed turtle, the world’s largest snake, the sheep with six legs—none of them had the alluring charm of the World’s Ugliest Woman. There was a brief time when the midway claimed to have a girl without a body, but we all knew that floating head trick was done with mirrors.
I went to the fair this year with my husband, Andrew, on a Sunday, a day when the crowds shuffled shoulder to shoulder past booths selling sheets, candles, cookware, and beef jerky. The air smelled of cotton candy, stale beer, and manure from the livestock barn. We left the carnival music of the midway fading and ducked behind a row of food stalls. With Andrew’s help I perched atop a concrete retaining wall, above the crowd as they streamed past. I wore a t-shirt with the smiling face of Big-Tex, the 55-foot statue greeting the crowd at the fairgrounds. His cheeks stuffed with fair food matched mine as I enjoyed my meal. I nodded to those passersby who met my gaze, and waved to the onlookers, the audience at the show.
My mother, grandmother, and aunt in Farmersville in the 1950s
The places we visit are never as perfect as they are in our memory. My grandmother’s house in Farmersville, Texas no longer exists. A remodeled version of the Dairy Queen I visited as a barefoot child sits beside the highway and still serves up chocolate dipped cones and cheeseburgers. You can see the Dairy Queen from the overpass where I used to stand with my cousin and spit on the cars passing below.
Dairy Queen – Photo by the author
My husband and I drove up to Farmersville on the weekend, a short day trip from our home. Over bridges spanning the lake, past trailer parks and fireworks stands to the little town that was once the Onion Capitol of North Texas.
The Onion Shed in Farmersville, Texas – Photo by the author
The Onion Shed sits near the town square. In the 1960s I helped my mother and grandmother fill burlap sacks with discarded onions, the rejects spilled and tossed onto the grass from the railway cars where the Collin County Sweets were loaded for shipment. No longer filled with the round yellow bulbs, you can find a flea market there on the first Saturday of each month.
The plaque at the Onion Shed
A portrait of Audie Murphy among the items for sale at the Clay Potter Auction House
We wandered through antique stores on the town square. I am always surprised to find the toys like those from my own childhood, stacked on dusty shelves and labeled “vintage.”
There were no toys in my grandmother Mattie’s wood frame house. A print of Jesus knocking at the door and a framed copy of the TV Guide with Johnny Carson on the cover decorated her living room wall. If I slipped from my mother’s view I would have just enough time to explore Mattie’s bedroom. I could hide under the fuzzy chenille bedspread and peak out through the fringe skirting the bottom where it brushed the floor. Visiting children were turned out into the yard, chased from the house by apron-wearing women too busy with cooking and serving to put up with our foolishness.
Window display – Photo by the author
Small towns often have treasures tucked away, to be uncovered by those with time and patience to wander. The post office sports a mural painted in 1941 as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
WPA mural in the Farmersville Post Office – Photo by the author
A short walk to downtown from Mattie’s house, over the railroad tracks and to the pecan tree shaded park, and I could find the snow cone stand there in summer. Crushed ice in a paper cone that dissolved as the treat itself melted to slush in the heat. But I could drink the last of it, my hands, lips, clothes stained red, purple, blue, green.
Old Electricity Generator in the city park – Photo by the author
There were no snow cones for sale on the day we visited, but I bought a Dr. Pepper from one of the stores. Andrew and I sat and shared the drink on a bench near the old movie theater downtown.
The movie theater in downtown Farmersville, Texas – Photo by the author
Closed for years, posters from films starring the hometown hero, Audie Murphy, hang on the front. I imagine my mother there on a Saturday night, palms slick with butter from the popcorn.
We ended our visit with a stop at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. My grandparents, Grover Cleveland Cullum and Mattie Elizabeth Watson Cullum, are buried there, as are their parents. We searched for their graves but couldn’t locate them. I hadn’t been there in years and the day was too hot for much effort. The one place in town that hadn’t changed but I couldn’t rely on my memory to find the family plot.
We did see some interesting gravestones.
Farmersville 100F Cemetery/Odd Fellows Cemetary
“Some of these people were alive during the Civil War,” Andrew commented.
“Yes,” I said.
Tired and sweaty, we climbed into our air conditioned Honda and headed home. Past the shops downtown, the onion shed, the park, the railroad crossing, stopping at last near the overpass so I could hop out and snap a photo of the Dairy Queen. Then onto the highway and home, leaving behind the layers of memory. My mouth, dust dry as I lean over a metal guardrail, the low mournful train whistle in the dusk, the sharp scrape of sidewalk on bare feet, the candy syrup from a grape snow cone, icy cold contrast to a dog summer day. The scent of sweet onions, yellow and round as baseballs, hidden like Easter Eggs in the soft green grass.
We didn’t need twenty-five pounds of sugar, but I felt a small thrill of satisfaction as I lifted the plastic bag onto my cart. The sensation could have been a stab of pain from hefting the heavy sack.
“What will we do with that much sugar?” My husband, Andrew asked.
“I’ll use it for my tea and coffee,” I answered. “It won’t spoil,” I added, after calculating how long the hoard would last if I drew out my usual ½ cup per week. I pointed to the back of the bag. “And here’s a recipe for sugar cookies.”
When I first spotted the shiny white package in the clearance aisle at Kroger, I thought it contained pool chemicals. I stepped over the bag where it lay on the floor, snugged against the lowest shelf as though someone had lost the strength to lift it back into place.
“Twenty-five pounds for $4.89! That’s…” My accountant brain calculated the price per pound—“a great bargain.”
If asked to list the features of their dream home, most people would include a lovely kitchen, a spacious backyard, a sparkling pool. My perfect house would contain lots of closets. Closets with shelves, racks, walk-in closets, storage spaces tucked under stairs, coat closets so wide and deep you’d think there’s a door to Narnia in the back. I need space for my stuff.
“It’s not hoarding if it’s something we will eventually use,” I told Andrew as I crammed twelve skeins of mulberry hued yarn into a cardboard box, to stash under the bed. Buy-one-get-one, how could you refuse?
When I was a child, my mother paid for our family groceries with food stamps. We stood in line for government commodities—five pounds of cheese, flour, canned vegetables, and sometimes sugar. Having survived the Great Depression, my folks were certain that economic ruin lay just around the corner. My dad held onto a booklet of sugar rationing stamps from World War II until the 1970s, when he passed them on to me.
I’ve inherited my parents’ insecurity, as sure as I’ve inherited my dad’s under bite and my mother’s nose. Like them, I ease my anxiety over the future with a full pantry. I consider my Costco membership as thrilling as a ticket to an amusement park. There’s a cult of clutter-clearing going around, but I wonder if any of them have experienced the life-changing magic of buying in bulk.
At home, I transferred five pounds of rice into several smaller jars, dumped a pound of beans into a pot to cook for dinner, and repurposed a plastic tub I had reserved for the ten-pound bag of cornmeal forgotten in the back of the pantry. The twenty-five pounds of sugar had landed on the clearance aisle because of a small hole in the package’s top. I discovered this at the store when I lifted the bag onto the register to scan the price tag.
“No problem,” I reassured Andrew while I swept grains of sugar off my clothes. “I’ll put it up in something when we get home.”
“The ants will love it,” he said, as he knocked sugar from the bottom of his shoes.
Safely secured in large tubs, glass jars, plastic totes, and the china bowl next to the coffee maker, I sighed with relief knowing my sugar future was secure. If we find ourselves in an apocalypse before my hoard runs out, drop by. We will have cookies.
The USS Cavalla rests at Seawolf Park in Galveston, Texas. On June 19, 1944 she sank the Japanese carrier Shokaku, one of the warships responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Andrew and I climbed down the ladder into the sub, a giggling group of teenage girls behind us.
The Cavalla, decommissioned in 1946, was retrofitted as a “hunter/killer” sub in 1952 during the Soviet threat. She specialized in attacking other submarines.
In 1971 the USS Cavalla was moved to Seawolf Park. The park is named for the USS Seawolf, a submarine lost at sea during WW II.
The sign at the entrance to the park reminds visitors the sub is a war machine. Not much has been changed inside the Cavalla, but they did add air-conditioning for the tourists.
The boat sits on dry land, but I did not want to linger below. I whispered “This is a War Machine” as we bent and twisted through the cramped quarters. I prayed everything was indeed decommissioned as the young ladies behind us touched dials and jostled us as we journeyed through the tour.
The destroyer escort USS Stewart sits beside the USS Cavalla. Predator and Protector.
We toured the ship, climbing up the stairs at the side, rising into the cloud puffed sky.
We went below, into the eerie quiet that seemed spacious after the submarine. There was no air-conditioning and the teenage girls did not follow us.
There were no ghosts there, and if not exactly haunted, the place compelled us to silence, remembering the souls lost on the boat the park was named after, the USS Seawolf.
Our rented Buick rocked as the tractor trailers and rock haulers zipped past on the highway. I gripped the door handle, certain a homicidal maniac steered each truck rushing by, intent on racking up another victim on their way to the West Texas oil fields.
We had selected the Buick from a fleet of options. We assumed the larger car would be safer and more comfortable than my ten-year-old Honda. The rental car’s bucket seats fit anorexic teenagers, not late middle-aged women, and my butt had grown numb over the miles since we left Dallas. If not for the thrill of certain death in a fiery car crash, the rest of me would have fallen asleep staring at the flat scenery on our way to Carlsbad, New Mexico to tour the caverns.
One arm draped over the console, my husband Andrew stared through the windshield, judging how much room he needed before he could squeeze the Buick in between the cement truck and the oil tanker in the next lane.
“Would you like to stop and see the Odessa Meteor Crater?” Andrew asked.
Everything I know about meteors I learned from movies, television, and comic books. They don’t have a good reputation. Anything tied to the phrase “extinction event” is something to avoid. Another semi rocketed past, blowing sand and gravel across us. As Andrew steered the car back into our lane, I answered “Sure.”
I’m a big fan of bizarre roadside exhibits. I imagined a meteor crater would be a giant hole in the earth, similar to the Grand Canyon, but smaller, less grand. Maybe they would have a viewing station and tiny plastic meteorites for souvenirs. I got out my camera and checked the battery, to be sure I was ready to take pictures of the stunning vista.
Andrew turned off the main highway and bumped along a rough road paved in potholed asphalt. We arrived at a gated entrance in front of a metal-roofed, tan brick building. A sign on the side proclaimed we had reached the Meteor Crater Museum. The place could have been any other standard government building- a place to renew your driver’s license or pay your water bill.
I pulled myself from the tight embrace of the bucket seat and climbed from the car, camera at the ready. Leaning against the Buick, I turned around and searched for a glimpse of the crater. I didn’t want to fall into some crevice and break a hip right at the start of our vacation. The landscape stretched out to the horizon, broken only by scraggly desert plants and medium-sized chunks of limestone. In the distance, oil field pump jacks bobbed up and down like dinosaurs.
“How much further is the crater?” I asked. When I shielded my eyes and squinted through the swirling dust in the parking lot, the most interesting thing I noticed was a concrete picnic table.
“It’s right there,” Andrew answered, pointing. “That dip in the ground.”
The sandy soil past the parking lot sloped down in a shallow bowl. If I held my head just right, I could make out a circular shape to the area. We strolled along the little path that wound through the crater and read the educational signs that told about the history of the site, until I grew tired of the heat. Andrew stopped to admire an anthill, and I walked on ahead to the museum, hoping for a water fountain and air conditioning.
The exhibit area was slightly larger than my living room, and staffed with three people, two men and one woman, sitting on rolling chairs behind a glass counter. They all turned to greet me as I strolled in. I picked up a brochure explaining the history of the crater. It must have been larger when they discovered it in 1892. The crater was formed 63,000 years ago, so I forgave it for being filled in with West Texas silt. I know how fast dust can accumulate if you aren’t diligent. If only we had visited sooner.
I looked over the small pieces of meteorites on display and glanced at the scientific charts and graphs. At last I stopped in front of a framed photo of a woman reclining on a hospital bed. This was Ann Hodges, a woman struck by a meteor in 1954 when it crashed through the roof of her house. I imagined her stretched out on her couch, relaxing with a book maybe, or watching television, her face illuminated with the blue glow from the screen. Maybe the accident happened after a commercial for Geritol or the new RCA Victor Portable Radio, her peaceful night shattered by a huge rock falling through her ceiling. Did she know what hit her? Or did she suppose Fidel Castro had targeted her, a housewife in rural Alabama, with a missile meant for Miami?
I turned from the display as Andrew walked over to stand by my side.
“I found the t-shirts!” he said.
He held up a gray shirt with “Odessa Texas Meteor Crater” printed on the front. A yellow and red meteor streaked down toward an innocent cartoon superhero, or a reclining woman.
All three staff members assisted me as I purchased the shirt. We left the cool air conditioning and stepped out into the bright sunlight of a West Texas summer. The blue sky overhead held no threat of hail, lightening, or flaming rocks. As we strolled across the parking lot toward the Buick, I decided the risk of venturing out on the highway was worth the reward of finding new places to explore. I was just as likely to be struck by a meteor at home while I lounged on my couch.
At the Odessa Meteor Crater
Terrye is a native Texan who enjoys writing stories set in her home state and other strange places. In her free time Terrye enjoys exploring antique, junk, and thrift stores for inspiration and bargains. She’s had stories published in small print and online journals, and writes short, humorous essays for her blog — https://terryeturpin.com/. Sign up below to follow her.
Another version of me has dirt under her fingernails
Photo: Geri Lavrov/Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images Plus
If another me exists in another universe, I picture her clad in a red gingham dress or blue denim overalls. She toils on a farm surrounded by corn and cows. This is the life I might have lived, had I followed the advice of a career aptitude test from my high school days. My life’s work decided by the 17-year-old me, while I sat hunched in a high school auditorium coloring in ovals on a Scantron sheet.
The test, sponsored by a branch of the armed services, revealed I should go into agriculture. Growing up in town, pulling weeds in our family garden was the closest I came to life on a farm. I imagined the work would be the same, only on a much larger scale. Mechanical aptitude came in second place, suggesting the possibility of a career in helicopter repair. I am certain my doppelgänger can both plow a field and fix a broken tractor.
They taught neither farming nor tractor repair at the school I attended. Girls were shuffled into Home Economics and handed a spatula while boys were enrolled in carpentry courses and awarded a hammer. Young ladies learned to bake a cake, sew a skirt, and type a note — all the useful skills we needed in the 1970s. What would I be when I grew up? I wanted to be a doctor, an author, an actress, a missionary, a teacher, or a scientist. Not a farmer.
I fumbled along as a waitress, telemarketer, stay-at-home-mom, carpenter, bookkeeper, and accountant — as though I were working my way backward through the alphabet. The alternate-universe me took the advice from the aptitude test and ran with it. She moved to sunny California and joined a commune. Far from the capitalist demands of a 9-to-5 job, she rises with the sun and feeds the chickens. She bakes her bread, sews her clothes, and types poetry on her Royal typewriter.
This woman exists on a different plane from me, but the older I grow the closer I feel to her. As my husband and I look at houses we might buy and towns where we might retire, I judge each option on whether there might be a spot for a garden. The places earn bonus points if there’s room for a small shed where I can set up a typewriter. Multiverse me would approve, I’m certain. Like parallel lines in a drawing, we’ll meet at the vanishing point.
This story was published in response to Human Parts’ Weekend Writing Prompt, “Give us a snapshot, a moment, an experience from a life you could’ve had. What are you up to out there in the multiverse? What would Multiverse You think of the life you have right now?” To receive prompts like this one every weekend, subscribe to our newsletter by following Human Parts.
Photo by the Author
Let's Get Out of Here 