Citadel

Imagine a very old man attempting to do the splits on a cold morning and you've got what it feels like to get back into writing after a long hiatus. I did the same with running two days ago, and was, for the first time in a long while, acutely self conscious of how awkward and pained I looked loping through the streets of this idyllic little desert town, frequently snapping Abby's leash as she strained in all directions trying to guess my next turn and map the contours of her new home from dog-level. She struggled with this, and once even clotheslined herself around a telephone pole's base when a mop-haired kid on a skateboard clattered past.

*side note: why do young boys these days [grimaces and shakes cane, then leans to spit off porch] attempt that wretched chili bowl-surfer-bedhead look? Very few have the right hair texture for it, and nearly all of them remain ignorant of the concept of hair products meant to de-frizz, give volume, etc. Cut your hair! Commies!

Today there are clouds in the sky promising to mediate between the sun and the ground. Good luck. Noon for the past week has been atom-bomb bright and merciless. The contrast between indoors and out has meant that most times when I enter a building I have to stand around for a while and wait for my vision to fade back in from a neon green haze. I've made no attempt to come up with some stage business for what I'm doing standing in the doorway, gasping and blinking and muttering, "Holy shit..."

The big question, now that the house is mostly in order (and looking far more like a home than anything I've lived in for the past three years-- thanks, Mom!), is should I immediately go out and find a job? In the past I've used my manic energy from gutting boxes and hurling plates into cabinets to funnel me right into interviews, and then jobs, but this time I'm wondering if maybe I should slow down a bit and try to make focused decisions.

When Pants came back from his horrific survival school, fifteen pounds lighter, quiet, and covered in weird bruises, he said quietly that he was going to try to eat healthier now that his stomach had shrunken from a week without food. He figured it was a convenient time to reset his food habits. Maybe it's taken someone starving my husband and beating him, but my inner Donna Reed has finally raised her sleepy head; I've actually taken a certain amount of pride in making nice breakfasts and dinners for the past three days. I've made spinach salad with citrus vinaigrette, pesto tortellini, red beans and rice (OK, not so much effort for that), bacon, eggs, and toast with fresh-squeezed orange juice-- and I've adjusted the lights and found good music to play while I cook and while we eat.

Pants is slowly recovering his strength, and is so grateful for the added effort that he hugs me and thanks me like a starving orphan straight out of Dickens.

Unfortunately, a few good meals have done nothing to calm his ever-resent money anxiety. Despite my protests, the calculator came out two days after he got home, and he steadily tapped and scribbled his way into grim-faced silence. So I'm torn between two directions, neither of which is mutually exclusive, I know, but they compete nonetheless: do I try to make a nice home for the two of us, fix healthy meals, and maintain a larger share of the bills and paperwork, or do I go out and try to find a job that will shore up our income enough to make him relax a little? Either way, my goal is the same-- to take the starch out of Pants-- but I've tried the job route before and it never seems like the money alone is enough, plus it wears me out to the point where I can't do everything around the house and we eat like fugitives at a convenience store.

Holding down a good job has always been a pride thing for me as well-- so few of the other military wives worked that it became something that set me apart (and above them, in my mind) and gave me convenient excuses not get involved in the gossip or in the competition over who wifed it up the best with her immaculate house and intricate brunch offerings. The other guys also gave me props for it with such classy statements as, "Thank God you don't sit around the house with your thumb up your ass all day."

Frankly, I'm considering some thumb up the ass time. Pants and I both need someone to balance out the schedule of full-throttle training and constant relocation. Since the weekend we got married two and a half years ago, there has been very little down time (and no time to use any of the mountain of expensive camping equipment we dutifully haul from one state to the next). Someone needs to be home. Someone needs to be the home.

Since we got to California, I've decided that part of what I'm going to do out here is read the literature of the area, and that's taken me first to John Steinbeck, who was born not far away in Salinas, and who wrote a lot about the migrant farm workers (albeit, not the brown ones) who made this area what it is. I'm starting with a re-read of The Grapes of Wrath (which rockets by when you're not being forced to read it), and then on to Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. If I'm not burned out on him by then, I'll hit Of Mice and Men and maybe even The Pearl. Something he wrote early on in Grapes about Ma Joad has stuck with me:

"She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken . . . And since, when a joyful thing happened, [the family] looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials . . . She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply waivered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone."

I don't think I've given much thought to this role in a marriage, and ironically, I think I've been the first one to start feeling like we might need a wife around here. Not a maid, and not a cook, but someone who makes this a soft place to land, a break from the performance and endurance demands that never seem to let up. This is uncharted territory for me, and many ways, much scarier than going out and finding some job I can bury myself in. I know I can work. But what about making a home? The compensation, both in money and praise and advancement, is concrete at a job, but what if I'm not the valedictorian of wifery? My ego would be putting down a pretty significant down payment on a sketchy investment.

Off to the grocery store for dinner supplies while I ponder that...