When we first discussed moving away from Colorado, I said to RegularDad: “You know… it’ll take about 5 years for us to really settle in anywhere new.”
That’s what it seems to take, at least for me, when I move to a new town in a new state, far far away from things and people that are comfy. Five years to find a house. Unpack. Find new friends. Then find more new friends because that first batch of new friends turns out to be people like the Crazy Crumb Lady. To find a doctor. A pediatrician. A dentist. To transfer all your medical records, car registrations, banking information and such to the proper new places. And then to Do That Again because it never works out right the first time, does it?
With each thing I’ve gotten squared away, I’ve kept thinking to myself: Okay. So, that’s done. NOW it feels like we’re finally done moving. But the weird thing is, I found myself saying that way too many times. So I guess all that time, I wasn’t really done moving. And since it’s only been 2 years since we moved here — almost to the day, actually — I guess I’ll be saying that for about 3 more years.
So, why am I telling you this?
Because just this weekend, one Enormous Chunk of Getting Settled In Here finally fell into place. Sunday afternoon, I climbed into the car all by myself and drove to a very nice lady’s house and sat down at her dining room table with a dozen or so local poets and spent 3 or 4 hours in a critique session.
It took me roughly two years, but I finally found my peeps.
And you know who I have to thank for it? The Crazy Crumb Lady. Of all people. That’s the story of my life, pretty much. People that drive me utterly batshit have this incredibly irritating habit of doing unexpectedly nice little things for me, things that turn out to be larger and nicer than ever even Intended. And I find myself indebted to them. Forever. Crazy Crumb Lady. My mother-in-law. The list goes on and on.
Last summer, out of the blue, Crazy Crumb Lady called me up and told me about some flyer she’d seen at a bookstore about some sort of poetry contest in the county.
“You should enter!” she said to me.
“Maybe I will,” I said. “Thanks.”
So, at the last minute, I entered this contest. It’s a county-wide poet laureate contest they hold every year. So I sent in 10 poems, and I kinda rushed it in at the last minute, because that’s how I do everything these days, and I didn’t even make a copy of what I sent in, and then I sort of forgot all about it. Until September, when they sent me a letter that said I’d placed 7th out of 70 entries, and invited me to read one of my poems at a reception in November.
Pretty cool, yes?
So, I went to the reception in November and stood up in front of all these people and introduced myself a bit, saying I’d moved here from Colorado and was hoping to connect with poets here, and then I read a poem. And after the whole thing was over, scores of people approached me and handed me email addresses and telephone numbers and copies of their manuscripts and one of the people there even knew one of my old Colorado poet buddies. They’d done their MFA together, years and years ago. Small world, huh?
So, I left that reception with a big smile and a whole lotta contacts, but then the holidays hit, and I couldn’t seem to find any spare time to sit down and email anyone, let alone get on the phone. But someone had put me on a mailing list, and I got word about a workshop happening in January, and I sent in a request to attend, but shyly, because the truth is, I’m really terribly shy. The unfortunate thing about my type of shyness is that it tends to make me talk incessantly like a fool while I’m at events like poetry receptions, especially when I’m nervous. I sound, in fact, quite a bit like the way this whole freekin’ blog reads, which gives you a good idea of why I tend to cringe when I re-evaluate things later on when I’m lying in bed not-sleeping.
But, anyway.
I wish I could describe to you what it feels like to finally be connected to people who don’t think you’re strange for sitting in front of a computer monitor and counting off iambic pentameter on your fingertips, how different the sky looked as I drove back home to cook dinner and get everyone squared away for the upcoming week, the utter completeness of my life at that moment, the total serenity. It’s been way too long since I’ve had that kind of day. And I never even realized how much I missed it until Sunday afternoon, when I sat with a bunch of poets and did what poets do best. I’d swear the click was an audible one. One more piece falling into place.
And NOW it feels like we’re done moving. Seriously. NOW it does. So, thanks Crazy Crumb Lady. I guess you ROCK. In your own little crazy way. I’m still never gonna clean up my crumbs for you, and don’t think I haven’t noticed how you refuse to eat or drink anything I have in this house anymore, that I haven’t noticed your not-too-subtle runs to Starbucks as soon as I put on the kettle, because I have noticed. That’s why I stopped inviting you over. No fool me.
But… you rock anyway.
