"You lead a strangely sheltered life," Sarah said flatly to me one day after I confessed I'd never had raspberry pie before, one of a list of things I'd never experienced prior to Ten Sleep. I vanquished a host of "nevers" in the last three months:
--driving a stick shift (while my cousin Andrew gripped the armrests of his seat and pretended not to be terrified)
--galloping bareback across the hay fields with Cassie (I regret working too much and not getting to do this more often)
--getting high (on VERY strong cleaning chemicals while cleaning out the bathrooms at the high school...turned me into a giggling twit for an hour)
--watching my crazy relatives fire roman candles at each other and catch the field on fire (Andrew said when fireworks carry the label "Caution. Light and get away." It REALLY means "hold in hand and aim at someone's face")
and allowing myself forgiveness for the first time in over a year.
Many people know that my Freshmen year of school was full of painful memories, and watched me fragment slowly into something I wasn't. There is a kind of flower on the hills, I want to call them Daylilies, which bloom only after the sun has gone down. The only eyes that get to see these flowers are those similarly active at night: coyotes, bats, alley cats, and night-shift waitresses heading home late. It was Sarah, one of the cooks at the Crazy Woman, who pointed them out to me one day, and I couldn't help but compare their transformation to mine last spring. I began my school year full of life and eager to make friends and be involved with every activity on campus, and slowly closed myself to the confines of my room until over time, I became a living Daylily. Coming out only in the late late hours when sleep escaped me as it so often does. My writing, both in classes and for my blog, became sullen, withdrawn, and dark. Eventually, I gave it up entirely. Writing down my emotions made them more real, and thus more painful to bear.
But something changed the longer I stayed at the ranch. I felt my roots stir, my desire to stretch out and fight the long nighttime hours win out, and eventually, slowly, I started to put thoughts to paper again. A friend of mine suggested a kind of therapy for me. Keeping two notebooks as journals over the summer; one with only positive entries that showed progress, healing, and joy, and one that recorded everything else. Within two weeks of being on the ranch, I expressed these two things: "My cousins really do feel like brothers and sisters to me. The whole family is like that, they just adopt you in, give you a place to stay, with no questions asked. They don't care about my past. There is love here." And then later, "It's good to not be afraid to write anymore." As the summer drew to a close I felt a flash of fear that I might crumble back into a broken Daylily, but as Valerie, my coworker at the school said, "Wyoming has a way of staying with you."
And she was right. Wyoming is everywhere. In the shards of freshly cut grass spilling over my shoes and piercing my nose with the natural earth that the city tries so hard to cover. In the handful of country tunes that somehow made it into my playlist by the end of the summer despite all previous loathing of that genre, because sometimes they really do know exactly what to say. It's in the sky and the beauty of campus. And most pressingly, it's in my mind, flashing to the surface every time something triggers a memory of what has been the best summer of my nineteen years.
Today I walked to Albertsons to pick up last minute school supplies and got the uncomfortable feeling of eyes following me across the hot asphalt of the parking lot. I nearly walked straight into the thing before I realized what everyone was staring at: an over-sized antique of a John Deere that had somehow shuddered and wheezed it's last tired miles into this particular park space, right next to a shiny new silver Mustang. The contrast between the two vehicles was laughable, and I snapped a picture with my phone just like everyone else rolling their eyes and shaking their heads, writing "only in Idaho!" on their Facebook profiles from their Smart Phones. But a feeling kept nagging me up and down the aisles of the store and to the check-out stand. It wasn't until I was walking out the automatic doors that the feeling developed a name: Homesickness.
Yes, only in Idaho would a tractor and a Mustang share the same road with semi-equal respect. In Wyoming, it would be the Mustang people gawked at and photographed, and the big city folk inside the vehicle being ridiculed for daring to navigate the same dirt roads. As I passed the strange pair again on my way home, I let my loyalty slip to the tractor and its owner, whispering the same parting lines I gave to everyone in Wyoming, "drive safe."
There is this duality existing in me now. The born and raised Idaho Falls native who needs a telephone to be surgically removed from her ear to have a real conversation, and the country girl who would rather listen to crickets chirping at night then the cacophony of electronic buzzes and beeps that now keep her awake in her dorm room. The way I still can't pronounce "creek" properly (crick instead of creak,) the way I've come to glare at people who freak out when a little mud and rain gets on their shoes. I have to remind myself that I was exactly like that, AM exactly like that, nine months out of every year. It's only in the summer time, when I'm removed from city limits and my self-imposed picky lifestyle, that I truly become who I was meant to be. Open. Free. Selfless. Strong.
I chose to spend my summer in Ten Sleep, Wyoming (population three hundred and four) away from my friends and family and the familiar for two reasons. First, because I had made a promise to somebody I cared about that I would not be around flashing my existence in her face, and secondly because I needed money. Tuition was on the rise, textbooks are expensive, and a little spending money is as good as gold to a college student living off mac n cheese and popcorn. My Aunt Becky acted as my guardian angel, job hunter, and reference and helped me get two jobs: one as a waitress at Crazy Woman Cafe, and one as a janitor at the local (and only) school in town.
Working at the cafe was absolutely the best job I've ever had. Ever since I took a road trip with my mom and we listened to Joan Bauer's "Hope Was Here" on tape, I have longed to waitress. Hope is more than a waitress in the novel, she changes lives. Now I can't really say that I changed anybody's life serving endless coffee and Philly steak sandwiches, but there were little moments that shined. The expression of pure child-like euphoria on the face of a woman celebrating her ninety first birthday when I slipped her a piece of cherry pie on her way out the door. "You only turn ninety one once," I smiled and she laughed and replied triumphantly "calories be damned!" The night when a snooty couple with a poodle insisted Steve had over-cooked their steak, and Steve ripped the meat open with his bare hands, waving it in their shocked faces and demanding that they call it anything but medium rare. (Steve got the full tip from that table, despite the couple's fervent demand that I give nothing to "that uncultured man." Best money ever spent for a night that is now legend.)
Last night in the college cafeteria as I scanned the choices for dinner, my waitress-trained brain reduced every beautiful dish to shorthand: "Organic fed beef roast with a vegetable medley...spicy chicken stir fry...cous cous...and chocolate cream custard" becomes "spec w/veg...fry...CC...and tard." Crude? Maybe. But it gets the job done. If there's one thing I learned in the cafe it was that food doesn't have to sound pretty to taste good. Just take the horrible assault on the senses called Sour Cream and Raisin Pie. AMAZING. Really. Ask anybody.
I loved the bikers who came through on their way to Sturgis or Yellowstone. The stories they had to tell and the generous tips they offered. I loved my other waitresses, with whom I could talk openly about school, sex, life, and fight over the tables with the cutest guys. I almost soiled my jeans many times laughing so hard with the cooks and the dish-washers, and still miss the pies that Mary Margaret would make. I miss Sarah and Steve, who took up the immense task of being my guardian angels over the weeks and helped me believe in myself again. I even miss Gail, the owner of the Crazy Woman who up until the last couple weeks of work I was convinced hated me, because I was clumsy and broke things and asked for days off to trail cows with my cousins.
Being a janitor was also amazing, but in the "I can't believe I take this for granted so much" kind of way. Janitors are definitely some of the most under-appreciated people in the workforce, and for the first time I experienced what it was like to wax floors only to have a single table scratch them to pieces later, to shampoo and scrub and shine classrooms that would be demolished in a few weeks by children with innocent faces and sticky hands. I am forever grateful for Valerie and her patience with me, her stories about her grandchildren, and the talks that we had about growing up which ended in hugs and tears.
But the best memories came from the ranch, and from the family that lives there. Shara amazes me. I watched her calmly flip her baby boy Brandon over on her knee and administer CPR when he choked on his breakfast, while I stood frozen and helpless nearby completely freaking out. When the rest of the house is yelling and stomping trying to get organized and out the door, she is humming a song or wishing us well or making someone smile. Brandon seems to have absorbed this calming ability. One hot July night when I was staring up at the ceiling feeling lost and waiting for sleep that would not come, I heard him screaming in the room above mine. Minutes ticked by and he didn't go back to sleep, so with a sigh I got up and climbed the stairs to his room, finding him wide-eyed and howling at a nightmare. He clung to me when I picked him up and I sat with him in the rocking chair for nearly an hour, feeling my anxiety melt away with each passing minute as the little body I was trying to comfort comforted me instead.
Each of my cousins and I bond in a different way. For one it's video games, for another horse-back riding, and for a third it's fencing high up in the mountains, where troubles seem to be nonexistent. (Maybe hermits like John Muir and Jedidiah have the right idea.) We all bonded when Ten Sleep got struck with a nasty case of the flu, and we swapped barf buckets and fever reducers and played board games in the basement. Andrew even managed to drag me out on a couple of double dates with his friends, where I experienced another couple of "nevers:" fishing in the dark, archery, walking the train tracks at night. My Uncle and I might disagree on politics, but I will never be able to give him enough credit for picking the most beautiful place on the planet to live, or give enough thanks to my Aunt for working so hard for people (like me) who are often ungrateful. They are the people that helped me feel like myself again, helped me stop being so angry with the world and with God, and loved me in spite of me. They deserve medals.
This morning I look out my third-floor window at the campus beneath me, at the city spread out around me, and realize I feel the most at home walking through those wheat fields I can barely see shining gold and amber in the distance. For now, I will have to settle on weekend bike trips to find the open spaces free of cluttered living and a cluttered mind, but next summer you can bet I will be headed back to the place that opened its arms to me. Thanks Wyoming :)
