Friending

A few weeks before Wes and I moved to Nashville, I decided to look up a childhood friend on Facebook and see what she was up to. I'd looked for her before, I think, but couldn't find her under her maiden name. I tried again and had more luck. Imagine my surprise when I found that this friend, whom I'd seen briefly in college but hadn't really spent time with since middle school, was living in Nashville, Tennessee. Once we became Facebook "friends," I found out that she was a nurse in the children's emergency department at Vanderbilt. Seriously -- what are the odds?

Melissa and I have reunited since we got to Nashville. We've spent hours sitting and talking and looking at photos and laughing about how crazy it is that we found each other this way. She is the same sweet, fun, energizing personality I remember but -- reasonably -- so much more mature and grown-up and intense as a personality. We would have been fast friends had we met as adults. We've been to the flea market together, taken Oliver to a toy store. If I can talk her into it, we're going to the movies when a new film opens in a few weeks (I need someone to see movies with me that Wes doesn't want to see!). I've met her husband, who is wonderful and makes so much sense as her husband. We've had deep, personal conversations within hours of getting back together. It's amazing that we found each other again, and it's totally amazing that we found each just as I was moving here.

While unique, this isn't totally unlike my other close friendships. I met my dear friend Tricia the summer after my freshman year of college. We taught together in a summer program and became immediate friends. Her older sister had graduated from the school I was attending for college. We'd both been swimmers, had interest in education, and just -- I don't know -- meshed well. Our students thought we'd been friends for years. After that summer, we never lived near each other again. I visited her at UVA, and she came down to Davidson -- maybe one time each direction. I went abroad for a year, her for a semester. We met each other's boyfriends and supported each other when those relationships ended. Tricia was my maid of honor at my wedding, and I was a matron of honor at hers. She flew to Chicago for a super-brief visit (she's a very overworked corporate attorney) to be able to attend my baby shower a year ago, and in three weeks, I'll have the honor of being at hers. Sometimes we go a long time without talking, and occasionally it makes me nervous. I worry that we've grown apart, that Tricia has a full life without me and doesn't need the work of keeping up with someone so far away. But inevitably something brings us back together, and we reconnect and give the friendship new life.

My friend Kim is a similar story. We both attended North Carolina Governor's School the summer between our junior and senior years of high school. We were both there for English -- her for poetry, me for prose (Her experience must have been more formative, as Kim just finished her MFA in poetry. She writes, teaches, and edits a poetry journal). Kim and I stayed in touch, mostly through snail mail, for some time. The last time we saw each other was during our sophomore year of college. Then when I got pregnant with Oliver, she started reading my blog. And we got back in touch. We chatted through email. And after Oliver was born, she started asking questions, about deciding to have a baby, getting ready for pregnancy. And then suddenly, she was pregnant. And this weekend, I'll get to see her again for the first time in about ten years -- almost 8 months pregnant and surrounded by friends and family gathered to celebrate her wiggle baby.

I sometimes wonder why my close friends fall in this pattern. Most people have friends from childhood, but I don't really. That makes sense, though, since I moved around so much. Most people have friends from college, and while I keep in touch with several college friends, those closest to me from those years were people with whom I had a short, intense relationship and then didn't see for a while. Am I just annoying in person?

The one nice thing about having friendships that have lasted through the years in this way is that everyone is welcome to keep up or not keep as time permits. We visit when we can. We write when we can. We chat on the phone when we can. And when we can't, we all rest assured that in time, it'll happen -- and it will be like no time has passed at all.

At Home

My sister-in-law emailed me yesterday to say hello and casually mentioned that she'd like to see pictures of the house. It's weird. Every other time we've moved, I've had the house set up and everything it's place within a week or two. I've been excited to share pictures and show everyone where we live. This time everything's taking longer. Longer because I spend most of the day baby wrangling. It's impossible to sort books or run things up the stairs or do cleaning with toxic cleaners with a little guy following, grabbing, pulling. Longer because running errands for towels or trash cans or groceries seems to take all day. Things are spread out, even in a medium-sized town, and I don't know how to get anywhere and have to drop Wes off and pick him up from work if we want the car. And something in me just isn't motivated. The first day we got our goods, Wes took his parents and the baby out to look around Nashville. In the few hours they were gone, I had the entire kitchen unpacked and put away. And then I've just stalled. I get more done when Wes is home, but that's not that much. Part of it is that we're having some work done -- painting, a cabinet to store the television. We need to buy some things that we're not ready to buy yet -- another couch, hopefully a rug or two. So I don't want to take pictures until things are "done," but it seems like it's going to be a month or more before things are even kind of done. Right now it doesn't feel like my home. If I want to get something done, I still have to figure out where the things are to do it.

I still love the house. The backyard is great, but the grass is (thanks to the wonderful rain we've been getting -- no complaints there) always long because we never have time to mow and the mosquitoes make it hard to sit outside for very long. I'm ready to feel at home in my home. I want to start the school year with things more or less in tact so I can switch from moving in to maintaining. Maybe it's that I've never had this much house to take care of before, or this much house with a baby, or this much dark cherry floor with a dog that sheds all over it so that I have to vacuum twice a day lest the baby get lost in dog hair.

I know -- I hope -- it will come together. In the next few weeks the television will get mounted and the painting will get done, which also means I'll be readier to put up pictures in those rooms. I have school as a deadline -- perhaps that will give me some motivation. I've moved enough times to know it doesn't always happen right away. I like Nashville. I do. I just want to be home.

Five Years Later

Last Friday, July 24, Wes and I celebrated our five year anniversary. It's hard to belive it's only been five years. It feels that way in part, I suppose, because we'd been dating almost four when we got married, which means that we've spent almost a third of our lives together.

In true Wes-and-Liz fashion, we didn't do anything really noteworthy for our annivesary. We've never taken a true honeymoon, never stayed in some romantic hotel for our anniversary. One year we went to OHOP (that's the Original House of Pancakes) for breakfast after Wes worked an overnight. Last year we sort of skipped doing anything since my mom, sister, and sister-in-law were arriving for the baby shower. But we did celebrate in our own weird way this year. Wes left flowers for me when I got home from Georgia on Saturday -- conventional, but nice from a man who doesn't really buy flowers. He left a cute note, too.

I'd found a sitter to come on Sunday night so we could try out one of the cute, local restaurants at the end of our block. Little did I realize when I did that that everything cute and local in Nashville is closed on Sunday night. We ended up having a progressive dinner or sorts: appetizers at Jackson's, a college bar in Hillsboro village, burgers at Ruby Tuesday at Green Hills Mall, and cheesecake from the cheesecake factory at home, later that night. Most importantly, Wes and I had a nice to time visiting, talking about this and that (and not the baby, though that's not usually a huge challenge for us anyway).

The next night I was making dinner and went to cut up some vegetables. And, appropriate to the occassion, I pulled out some really nice Henkels' knives we'd been given for our wedding and I'd never used. These are five-year-old knives that I'm using for the first time because they're so good that they're very sharp, which means I'm likely to cut off my fingers.

So Happy Anniversary, Wes. Here's to five more years an in tact fingertips.

The marketplace

This Sunday, Wes and I spent part of our day exploring some of Nashville's local culture. No, we did not listen to country music.

First thing in the morning we headed over the local Farmer's Market. Nashville's Farmer's Market is really great because it's open every day except for a few holidays and all year. It has a permanent structure to house it and includes a garden area in addition to fruit, vegetables, and a few other items. I was very impressed with the number of vendors and quality of produce. We got peaches, beans, peas, yellow squash, zucchini, and even some eggplant and okra to try. Not everything is immediately local -- some of the peaches are from Georgia and South Carolina. One guy's stand looked like it was straight from the grocery store, with packaged celery and bagged apples and even bananas, which are decidedly not local. I was kind of hoping the market would carry other things, too, like fresh flowers or baked goods or even a meat vendor, but what's there is fantastic. The prices are cheaper than the grocery store, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the farms accepted food stamps. There was a lot more there I'd like to try -- a big watermelon, a cantaloupe, some bell peppers. I'm hoping to be able to establish a regular visit time even after school's bag to be able to take advantage of the market.

Later that afternoon, in the company of a dear friend and her husband, we also visited the Nashville Flea Market. This takes place at the fairgrounds (less than 5 minutes from us by car) the last weekend of every month. It would be an understatement to say that this flea market is extensive. They have everything. We saw furniture new and old (Wes and I both spotted a beautiful but beat-up pie cabinet we loved, with punched tin and all, only to learn it was hand-carved in 1810 and for sale for $950), dishes, bikes, musical instruments, toys, clothes, old video systems and games, art. Wes, ever the thrifty one, snagged a bag of socks for $5 and a shovel for $6. I bought a bag of toy airplanes for my father for $8 (I really need to learn to haggle...). Melissa and Drew even bought a bush for their backyard. I'll look forward to going back to the flea market when it's back in town, this time maybe when it's opening rather than closing, and would especially find it fun with Wes's mom, who has an eye for recreating and restoring old furniture.

Thanks to the day's excitement, Oliver skipped both naps and was completely exhausted by bedtime. He was also hot in his stroller that day and, we now realize, at the beginning of an illness. Hopefully he can enjoy the outings a bit more next time.

The dog next door

Our new neighborhood is full of dogs. Next door on one side is Cooper, a very old and, as I've heard it, ailing black lab mix. Across the street is Henry, an adorable, precocious lab mix who likes to run without permission out of the house and across the street to visit Cooper and/or his family. Next to Henry is a sweet St. Bernard whose name I don't remember. Down the street is Rowan, a golden retriever. And walking by are endless other dogs that surround us. Next door on the other side, though, is Spike. That's a female named Spike, of course. Spike loves to bark, and yet it's such a serious, self-confident bark from such a small dog that it's really funny. Wes was working in the yard one day when suddenly a little dog head peeked under the fence. Lucy, the first to pounce on something in her yard and bark back, didn't know what to make of it. She checked out Spike, looked at us with wondering eyes, and just sniffed.

Get better, Grammy!

Last week, Oliver and I picked up a rental and braved the three hours between Nashville and suburban Atlanta to spend five days with my mom, who is recovering from a complete hip replacement, dad, and sister, who was in town to visit and help, too. It was a relaxing few days, being away from the chaos of our house and in the midst of other people who wanted to hold and play with Oliver. My sister, in particular, is a trooper when it comes to Ollie. She loves to do the fun things and never balks at the less-fun things, like changing the massively wet and sometimes poopy diapers that Ollie sports when he wakes up in the morning. Oliver had a grand time exploring the basement, where my parents are staying until my mom can handle stairs. There were baby toys, which are fun and all, but also a steep flight of stairs, lots of ledges and windows, and most importantly, my mother's walker and "grabber" that she uses to get dressed and open doors and such.

On Wednesday, my sister and I enjoyed a few hours of girl time, shopping for some new school clothes for her, while my dad played baby-wrangler. He went up and down the stairs over and over with Ollie, made tents using the afghan and the walker, let Oliver scale the couch to play with the coveted blind pulls, taught him peek-a-boo, and watched him play endlessly with an oatmeal canister and the top to a box of shape toys. Both the "boys" were exhausted that night.

My sister and I got to talk about books, husbands, houses, news, and school (her school is, sadly, furloughing teachers for three days due to budget deficits in Georgia). She's already one semester into her master's program in literacy, so she shared a lot of what she's been learning as I get ready to start my program. She and I worked through boxes of loose photographs of my mom's, helping her put them in order so they can go into albums. Laura, my mom, and I caught up on episodes of The Closer and Raising the Bar, and Laura, dad, and I took Oliver to the pool one afternoon. We ate Extreme Moosetracks and made caramel corn one night. After she left, I cleaned and refilled mom's hummingbird feeders so she could watch the birds come and go in her beautiful garden.

Mom is recovering very well, being a real trooper but asking for help as she needs it. It was nice to have a week of time together. I've gone so many years seeing my family only once or twice a year that I really appreciate the extra time I've gotten with them in the last year. Though Laura is still more than seven hours away, I sense we'll see each other more often, if sometimes at our parents'.