In the early 1800s, people would find the initials G.T.T. carved on the doors of family’s and friends’ houses — Gone To Texas. Texas was the place to go, a sanctuary for outlaws, a place to start all over again, a place to begin for the first time. For me, it’s just home.
The boogie-ing part, not the sleeping at the wheel part. (Though, side note: Once I was driving up IH-35, from Austin to Dallas, and stopped to get gas. There was a giant tour bus there, the kind that bands use. Austin being the official Live Music Capital of the World [oh, you bragging Texans you], it’s entirely common to see them so I didn’t give it a thought. As I passed the bus, I saw it was Asleep At The Wheel, and as I glanced in the open door, I saw the bus driver seemed to be asleep at the wheel. It made the inner kindergartner in me giggle.)
ANYWAY. Yeah. My flight leaves NYC at 6am, so do you realize what time I need to get up in the morning? I haven’t done the backwards math yet, but I’m grateful I am still in the jetlag state of reliably waking up at 2am. I can’t wait to spend time with my daughter Katie…..a whole week, so luscious. We’ll bake (and eat, including pinto beans and cornbread, a delicious treat I don’t get in NYC) and knit and talk and watch movies and shop and be homebodies together. We both love that.
Everyone rags on Texas — and I’ll be honest, Texas politicians make that so so easy — but Texas is so much more than its idiotic politicians. Really. (And remember, it was historically a hard-core Democratic state. YES IT WAS! It took a bad turn in the 80s, like much of the south did, but I have hope that someday it’ll return to its Democratic roots.) Anyway, there’s so much that’s great about Texas, and Austin. I loved this article 50 Reasons Texas is the Best State in America. It was compiled in response to a piece written by Manhattan-based Gawker listing states by their worst-ness (Texas came in at 13), and the Gawker writer says:
The Texan ego is as big as the state, and no matter how much you point out to them that, uh, hey what about all this extremely terrible stuff, they will not listen. If you guys would just shut up about it for a while, the rest of us might like you a little more.
The funny thing is — and I say this all the time to New Yorkers — you could say that very thing about New Yorkers, who think the sun rises and sets on Manhattan, and that just outside the Manhattan borders, ignorance, evil, and chaos reign. Hrmph.
Anyway. Boogie back to Texas! Whee! GTT! Whee!
such a great time. 
Absence is a mighty loud presence, and right now Katie’s absence from my morning is screaming at me. I had such a wonderful time with her, every single minute was just a joy. You know, you start life with your kids knowing every tiny little detail about them – how they smell, what their poop is like today, the fact that coconut makes them gag, the way they talk in their sleep, and slowly slowly they move away from you. As it should be, of course. And then one day they don’t live with you and you get the high-level updates, what they’re studying in college, what they’re up to (filtered, of course). And then one day they have a grown-up life somewhere else and you don’t know the texture of their lives, and you “visit” each other. That’s hard going.
And of course it’s the whole point. From the moment they are born, they’re leaving. But that doesn’t mean it’s painless, even though there are those times all through their growing-up years when the idea that one day you’ll have your life back helps keep you going. Life is funny like that, giving and taking with the same hand.
There’s no way to catch up, so I’ll just post some photos that remind me of my wonderful visit:
katie making chili for dinner
behind katie's house
she has this beautiful big tree in her back yard
katie loves her dogs!
dear, regal oscar
My trip home was long but uneventful – when I finally made it through my front door, I was tired and sad the trip was over, and happy to be back home…..and excited to see this:
wollmeise AND nancy drew! delightful!!
My friend Tammy sent me a birthday package – surprising and so sweet! When we had our little yarn crawl trip earlier this year, I mentioned my curiosity about Wollmeise (first, how to pronounce the name) and lo and behold, Tammy sent me a skein. I don’t know the name of the color, but it’s very dark navy and green and blue-black with shades of rust and dark gold here and there. I think it may have a shawl destiny – Haruni, maybe. Don’t know yet. And you know how some people just have a gift-giving gift? That little book is Nancy Drew’s Guide to Life, which tickles me to death. Tammy, you are so awesome. Here are some handy pointers from the book:
From the chapter “Dating: A Primer” – A young lady with some judo skills can take care of unwanted advances in short order. ~The Whispering Statue
From the chapter “The Delicate Art of Etiquette” – Any woman who asks to be introduced to your widowed father is bad news. ~The Mystery of Lilac Inn
From the chapter “Sleuthing 101″ – Being able to throw your voice can get your unskilled assistants out of tight jams. ~The Ringmaster’s Secret
From the chapter “On Being a Lady” – Determination and spunk can elicit admiration from many arenas, even from the criminal element. ~The Phantom of Pine Hill
From the chapter “Powers of Observation” – Strange mechanical noises can only mean one thing: a printing press is being used for nefarious purposes. ~The Clue of the Broken Locket
And finally, I got a lot done on the tweed lace ribbon scarf, on my long flights. Just a little more and I’ll be finished with it and can start the scarf for my other writing group friend:
getting there
Lots to do this week, and then my 52nd birthday on Saturday. And I leave for Phnom Penh in 16 days! This is a wonderful time of year. Even if I do miss my Katie….and Marnie….and Trey and Tom….and Will.
chili, pintos, BBQ sandwiches, hamburgers. Austin. Circle of life, yeah.
Austin is a lot of things to me, not all good but not all bad, either. Between 1958 and 2006, I was a real gypsy; there were years in my childhood when we moved 6 times during a school year. I think a reasonable tally is that I’ve moved 80 times; if anything, that estimate is conservative.
But if you cobble together all the times I lived in Austin, it would have to count as my hometown. In a psychological sense to me, it is my hometown, where I’m from. Both my daughters were born here, so two of the most important events of my whole life happened here, on top of the rest. When I returned to Austin for graduate school, the place was so full of ghosts that it was kind of difficult, and I was very very happy to leave when I completed my degree.
Still, it always draws me and I feel excited at the prospect of coming back for a visit. PLUS Katie lives here, so I’ll always come back…..and not often enough. When Katie picked me up at the airport, we were both like little puppies (well, I was anyway) – you know how puppies are when they get excited, there may be … um …. urinary accidents. 
Katie and her husband bought their first home a year ago, and it’s the first time I’m getting to see it. For those of you who are parents: it’s the strangest feeling in the world to go to your child’s home, to settle into a beautifully-decorated guest room, to put your things away in the guest bathroom, to go downstairs to the living room and kitchen, to eat dinner they’ve prepared for you, to watch your child and her husband watering their yard, cleaning their kitchen. Weird and wonderful and amazing, and it somehow also makes me feel like I just moved to the outer edge of the stream of time. When I was little, I was on the outer edge; then I was in the generative reproducing generation, me and my brothers- and sisters-in-law all having babies and raising kids, tired and busy, not even thinking about that stream of time thing. Not thinking about it one little second, until those babies are now grown up and settling into that part of the stream.
But it’s not morbid, I don’t feel bad, I just feel a good dose of awe.
Aside from the soaking-up-Katie part of it, Austin is about food, about getting the food I can’t get in NY. So my first night we ate tex-mex at Chuy’s. You’ll see my adoration of humble food here: I had a bean and cheese burrito with tex-mex sauce and a weak frozen margarita (that’s the way i like ‘em!). Lunch yesterday, a chopped beef BBQ sandwich from Bill Miller’s, and last night, pinto beans and cornbread and I thought I was going to die from happiness. Today we’re grabbing a burger from Sonic, and tonight we’ll get sushi. Tomorrow, a Whataburger for lunch, and homemade chili! for dinner, while we give candy to trick-or-treaters. I can get fancy food deluxe at home in NY, but eating here means the humble food of my background, and it makes me really happy.
Yesterday I “revealed” my “secret” plan to teach Katie to knit – all those quotation marks are important, because of course Katie reads my blog and already knew of my “secret” plan, but the good thing was that she said she wants to learn! So today, our errands include getting the yarn and needles she needs to make her first scarf.
And with that, I’m off — she’s awake and I don’t want to waste a second.
knitting. ravelry. katie. travel. joy.
My morning ritual (like yours, probably) involves drinking my 2 cups of coffee while catching up on email and other web stuff. Of course this includes Ravelry. I scan through my friends activity page and investigate projects that look interesting. Nothing newsy there. But as I was doing that this morning, it hit me that one of the really great things about knitting is that it always meets you where you are. Just learning? Plain old scarves are in your realm of possible while also being just a little bit of a challenge. Getting better? Lace, shawls. Getting better still? Garments. Getting better still? Yeah, there are still more techniques, more complicated patterns, more horizons. That’s one of the many things I love about our shared passion.
The whole purpose of my trip to Austin is to soak up as much of my daughter’s time and attention as possible – plus, I’m going to meet Kelly in person, very cool. My Katie girl and I will chat, play games, run some errands, give candy to trick-or-treaters, bake a LOT, and just hang out together, and I know the time will be too short. Still, I’ll need to have knitting with me so while I’m packing this morning I’m considering which project(s) to bring. Definitely the lace ribbon scarf; I hope to finish that, for sure. The flights from NY to Austin are long and I have a connection both ways – in Charlotte NC going down, and in Houston coming back. Lots of good airplane/airport knitting time, yay!
At the end of today’s journey will be my daughter’s smiling face, and [finally] good Mexican food. See y’all later -
and p.s. I woke up with Neil Diamond in my head singing “Love on the Rocks.” No, my marriage is NOT on the rocks. I can’t get the song out of my head now. This may be a long day.
flashing back to the great year of 1977 via photos
I graduated from high school in Wichita Falls, TX, in 1977. The local radio station, KTRN, did this thing where randomly, at the end of a popular song, they’d play “KTRN flash….back!” and then play the song again. I remember driving to my job at Treasure City one afternoon, listening to the Captain and Tennille singing Love Will Keep Us Together on the radio, and as the song neared the last few notes, I said out loud the KTRN flashback deal, and then that’s what happened. I was so thrilled by my anticipation, mostly because boy did I love that song.
The day after I graduated, I moved to Austin (which is really the only place to be, in Texas, if you’re a thinking person). I’d lived there a number of times before, and loved the hippie vibe, the weirdness of Austin – immortalized for the last many years in t-shirts saying “Keep Austin Weird” – and the strange characters like Leslie, the cross-dressing homeless guy who looked damn good in his bikini and high heels (from the back, anyway). When I’d lived there three years earlier at age 14, my dad would take me to the Armadillo (Armadillo World Headquarters, if you weren’t a regular) where we heard live music by Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Willie Nelson (duh), and Linda Ronstadt. When I’d lived there even earlier, around age 9, my mother would take me to The Broken Spoke with her, a dive-y saloon where Janis Joplin got her start. Armadillo is gone, but the Broken Spoke is still there, and it still looks like the same dive-y saloon.
So this morning, when I saw this idea to search flickr for a particular year and post my favorite photo, of course I immediately thought of 1977 and Austin. I can feel it on my skin and in my bones, I can smell it, I hear it in my mind’s ear as clearly as the traffic below on Madison Ave. I couldn’t limit myself to one favorite photo, I found two that captured a couple ways of being a Texan.
This one is from a chili cookoff in San Marcos, a small town just south of Austin (now, it’s more like a far-flung suburb). What’s more Texas than a chili cook-off! This one isn’t at all self-conscious, like the fancy ones in Terlingua. The cowboy hats, those make my heart race. The very un-PC (now) “Indians,” what were they about and what did they have to do with chili? Whatever. I know just how it felt to be there, even though I wasn’t there. Thanks, Don Hudson, for sharing.
chili cook-offs should all be like this
And these, from Austin in the summer of 1977. Every year since 1963, there has been a party celebrating Eeyore’s birthday, on the last Saturday of April. It’s something of a free-for-all, a big costume party, a day to eat and drink and play silly games like sack races and egg toss (adults attend, by the way, it’s not an event for kids brought by their parents). There is a photo set on flickr of the 1977 party, courtesy of digitalmovie. I went to the party that year, but didn’t see myself.
What year would you pick?
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