Happy Anniversary to Me

Thirty-One Years in Texas

Thirty-one years ago this week I arrived in Austin, landing at the tiny, old Fisher Price airport with my ten-month-old son, few possessions and zero plans or forethought. I had precisely one friend in the city. For the first few months I drank beer, watched never ending loops of videos from Prince’s then new record, Diamonds and Pearls, and tentatively set out to explore my new hometown, which I initially very much hated. 

I got the world’s shittiest apartment next door to my friend’s place, the world’s second shittiest apartment. Now “condos,” these cheap apartments near campus were collectively known as The Avenel, and featured a sign out front done in fonts and colors to suggest one was arriving at a cross between a redneck water theme park and a heavy metal concert. 

I love this time of the year for all sorts of reasons, my Austin anniversary being a big one. The veil is thinning now, heading toward gossamer October and, just beyond that, the feasts for those who have passed. Memories—of which I am never short, being gifted/tortured by my steel trap mind—float in more easily. Better, because it is a happy time of year, the memories are of the joyful variety. 

I remember how I financed the move to Texas. I was a young freelance writer and a friend of mine worked for an ad agency that had landed a major contract. They hired me to revamp the mysterious pamphlet distributed annually to millions of girls, allegedly to explain menstruation, but really just to push their brand of tampons. The gig paid $4,000, an absolute fortune back then, when I was making eight bucks an hour slinging pizza at Imo’s in St. Louis. 

The catch was that under no circumstances was I allowed to talk about blood or pubic hair or basically anything that was actually happening to the adolescent girls’ bodies. As I had been kept in the dark by a similar pamphlet I found on my bed in sixth grade—even now at nearly 60, post-menopausal and hysterectomized, I continue to wait for my mother to explain my first period to me—I needed to convey that changes were a’comin’, and they would take some adjusting to. 

My favorite part of this memory is that, when I explained to my pizza co-workers what I was working on, they all chimed in with “great ideas.” When I told them I needed a title that was cheery and in no way hinted at the imminent avalanche of cramps, ruined clothing, and horny boys arriving unbidden on the front stoop, my boss Mike did not miss a beat. “I got it!” He said. “You can call it, ‘So You Wanna Wear a White Bikini…”

That money didn’t last long, but it lasted long enough for me to figure out how to make an income. A gig worker long before gig working was a coveted lifestyle, I opened a business writing term papers for rich UT students, very doable as this was pre-internet. I swear it started out as a tutoring service, but…well, whatever. Those kids loved me—I could have charged them quadruple my rates—and my greatest challenge was keeping my work in the range of B. I’ve always been an A+ student so dumbing down a paper on women in Texas politics for a 19 year-old aspiring rabbi from Boston wasn’t easy. One kid told me his father wanted me to move with him (the student) to Chicago to get him through grad school.

Fortunately, simultaneous to this mind-numbing paper factory I was operating, I scored three part time gigs that greatly shaped the life I would come to lead in Austin. I began writing for The Chronicle, working behind the scenes at Esther’s Follies, and waiting tables at the Magnolia Cafe. Being so new to town, I had no idea what a trifecta this was, or that the experiences would net me a group of dedicated friends with whom I remain close all these decades later. 

My favorite way to sift through endless memories of being a Texan is through my son’s eyes. A most beloved recollection is of a day, early on in our Austin life, we went to La Zona Rosa for lunch. I was still acclimating to the astonishing, wonderful fact that everywhere we went, free chips and salsa magically appeared on the table. What genius came up with this idea? A waiter, not even our waiter, observed young Henry, who was all of one year old at the time, and delivered unto him a monkey dish with ranch dressing in it. This was, I discovered, to allow my baby to begin to develop the muscle memory required for proper chips and salsa scarfing. It worked. What a thrill to watch my kid build up from ranch dressing to whatever the hell it is he can tolerate now—heat far beyond my own capacity.

Another time, he was on the phone talking to my mother. I was listening to him—he was maybe two—and I was seized with a combination of parental pride and sibling rivalry. The fact that I was raising him in a college town where he was exposed to all sorts of culture meant, to my thinking, he was far more well-rounded than his suburban cousins on the East coast could every hope to be. For crying out loud, he knew what a tortilla was! Then I heard a pause and he asked my mom a question. “Snow pants? What are snow pants?”

Okay, so maybe he didn’t know everything.

***

In a dog park in Tokyo a man once approached me to say hello, extend a welcome, and practice his English. He asked where I was from. I told him Texas. He nodded somberly and said, “JFK.”

It is fascinating traveling the world and mentioning I’m from Texas. Everyone has a romantic notion of what that means. People cannot resist asking if I have a gun, a horse, a ranch. Hilariously, somehow, through a chain of absurd events even I can’t process, I did manage to fulfill these stereotypes. I made it out of the heavy metal theme park and, after living in an array of situations in the city, I moved to the country. I bought a ranch. I learned how to shoot. I got a bunch of cows. And yes, I own and ride horses.

As I sat toiling over that little pamphlet, trying to break it to girls that everything was about to radically change, I could not foresee the seed money this provided would wind me up here one day, processing raw wool, slopping hogs, and midwifing calves. I’m certainly not complaining. 

In early June I went to New Mexico for two weeks. My old travel ways—not unusual for me to take anywhere from half a dozen to ten big trips each year—had long been sidelined by lockdown. Even as others eventually ventured out, I continued to stay home. But finally, I had an itch I could only scratch one way. I loaded up a couple of my dogs, hitched up my ancient camper to my truck, and off we went. 

On that trip, I suffered a severe case of an ailment that afflicts me every time I leave the comfort of my home. I felt a need to not merely visit, but to stay. I was completely over Texas politics for starters. When I got to Austin, Ann Richards had just been elected, Molly Ivins was at the top of her game, Barbara Jordan was alive, Slacker had just been released, and Austin had no clue that it was heading toward a future of fakery funded by a passel of billionaire tech bros who would see to it that never, ever again would a single mom be able to afford to live there on a waiter’s income. Now it was in ruins with psycho Greg at the helm, good old boys shitting on everyone’s parade, gentrification whitening everything even further, and women being stripped of our rights to privacy.

In New Mexico I spent a week at Ojo Caliente, soaking in the hot springs, then a week at Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O’Keeffe once lived. New Mexico is a wonderful place. Weed is legal, kind elder dykes abound (kind elder dykes being MY PEOPLE), the scenery cannot be beat, and the governor kicks ass. I cried a lot on that trip, even though ultimately the feeling I came away with was joy. I cried over matters personal and political. I cried over Uvalde. I cried over feeling displaced, not wanting to return to the state I had called home for thirty years.

On the drive back, I called my son, now a man, an adult far wiser and more patient than I can ever hope to be. I told him that I was planning to sell the ranch immediately, that I found a beautiful little place in Northern New Mexico, that it was time for me to start over again.

He heard me out. He concurred that things had gotten awfully shitty. He reminded me I’d run into shit no matter where I went. Then he got me to slow down and zoom out. He wanted me to think about the ranch, this cartoonishly cliche situation I had landed in. He wanted me to think about the hundreds of friends I have nearby, the very village that helped raise him to be such a good person. He wanted me to think about the amazing life I had built here. He suggested I stay a while longer.

So here I am. About to step into year thirty-two. I have no pamphlet to guide me. I will continue to make it up as I go along.