The Root of the Problem

I have to admit that I don't feel like I have any roots. Nah, I'm not talking about the dyed hair kind or the tree kind either, although that might eventually help me to illustrate my point later.

I'm instead referring to those metaphorical roots that your parents laid down for you when you were growing up. Usually most people I know (although maybe this is becoming increasingly less common in our transient society) had one house that they grew up in. They had their own room maybe with a canopy bed or cool bunk beds and the pencil markings on the wall signifying how much they grew each year. They attended the same elementary school for all 6 years and had a place to come "home" to when they eventually left for college. And maybe their mother is still keeping that room as a shrine to her baby bird that has flown the nest, or else she's cleaned it out by now and it's her sewing room.

I didn't really have these things. I attended about five different schools during my elementary years. I went to Catholic School for kindergarten when we lived in St. Paul, Minnesota. I remember the long bus ride over the Mississippi River and the gross boys on the bus who loved the diarrhea song (uh, uh) “When you're going up the ladder and you feel something.....” Eww, need I go on?

Then we moved to Maryland and I went to public school for first grade. In second grade we moved to Florida and I attended another school. I remember we moved down with the Peacock family. Mr. Peacock was a character & my Dad and him regressed into adolescent boys when the two of them got together. I remember the Great Ice Throwing Incident of '75 in Myrtle Beach, SC. We were staying in one of those tall hotels with an open atrium type lobby. My Dad & Mr. Peacock were on per diem for the move, so we traveled in style with about 7 kids in tow (4 Peacock kids & the 3 of us) Anyway, the interior halls of this hotel circled the perimeter of the lobby so you could look right down to the trees and couches and such in the lobby. My Dad & Mr. Peacock decided for some reason it would be a good idea to throw ice on the people down below. Strike that, they probably knew it wasn't really a good idea, but decided to do it anyway. I don't remember much else of the incident, but I think there might have been something about a hotel manager and maybe something about being kicked out of the hotel or maybe just a stern warning, but that may just be fuzzy memory.

Eventually, we moved back up North to Virginia in the middle of third grade. My Dad did contract work for Sperry Univac and most of his jobs involved the military. So we came to this small little town called Dahlgren because of the military base Besides that there was nothing much else going on there. There was general store, the old fashioned kind that sells everything from blue jeans to flour. There was also a convenience store, which I could ride my bike to. My favorite treat was getting Grape NeHi soda and red licorice. I would bite off both ends of the licorice and use it as a straw to drink my sodey pop-yummy. We were allowed some base privileges like the swimming pool, bowling alley, and movie house, which incidentally was an auditorium type room with folding chairs and a big portable screen and ancient projector. I remember seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind there. That summer we spent just about every day at the pool, which would play music over the loud speakers. I will always remember "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty and "With a Little Luck" by Paul McCartney & Wings from that summer.

But so as not to get too comfortable we then moved to Connecticut when I started fourth grade. I had my own room to hang up my Andy Gibb and Bee Gees posters and my cool stereo with the 8-Track tape player that allowed me to listen to the Grease soundtrack over and over again and pretend to by Sandy. Saturday Night Fever was also big at that time, so my sister & I would make up dance routines in the basement. I also remember cheering the Steelers onto victory as the defeated the Dallas Cowboys in the Superbowl. I think it was 1979?? We were waving those terrible towels.

We finally moved back down to Florida for fifth grade and that was the end of that. My Dad finally figured that this moving around was too much and he had to settle his kids down before I entered turbulent adolescence and started hanging around with the wrong crowd that would peer pressure me into vandalism and drugs and sex and stuff. None of which I ever did, I swear!

I was a pretty shy kid, and still am for that matter (the shy part, and maybe the kid part too). If I know you and am comfortable with you, you can't get me to shut up most times. But in unfamiliar situations and around unfamiliar people I do get quiet. I just am not that good at making small talk & keeping it going to avoid the dreaded awkward silences. And I'm not that aggressive and gregarious. I have no idea how I survived so many "there's a new kid in town" instances. And I don't remember any distress or anxiety about any of the moves. In fact it was always kind of exciting and I never did have problems making friends wherever we moved. It's a little bit of a conundrum.

Anyway, I guess my roots were laid down by the time I was 10 but that's half of your life with which to have planted your roots gone by the time you start college. (Albeit a blink of the eye once you hit 30 and beyond) And because of this I never really felt like I had a place to call home that I could look back at wistfully and visit the ghosts in the rooms of my childhood. I know, I know, a house is not necessarily a home. It's not about the walls around you, but the people inside- yada yada. Don't get me wrong, I have no complaints about my childhood or my family (at least not the earth shattering kind). But I sometimes envy people like my husband who grew up in the same house, in the same neighborhood, attended the same school, and has that home base to still latch onto.

Memories are strange, fleeting, and intangible things that are represented cognitively as shadows, or glimmers of a mood, a feeling, an impression and the easiest way to make them more dimensional and concrete is through our interaction with the material world. When my husband visits his hometown we drive around a lot with him telling me the stories of his childhood. There are the woods that the neighborhood kids would camp out in and tell Skunk Ape tales. This is the park where he funneled beer and his cousin's boyfriend made those funny elephant noises while blowing through the tube. That is the 7-11 where he would buy beer because they never carded, etc. etc. He has those buildings, and houses, and neighborhood constellations to tie those memories to so they can pinned down and made more evident. I would have to go on a cross-country trip in order to have that experience. So my memories remain these faded, foggy remembrances with nothing solid to attach them to.

But back to the tree image, I have heard that oak trees, which are rather majestic and can get huge, are only connected to the earth through this very short root system. So that was why when Hurricane Fran of 1996 roared though NC a lot of oak trees were toppled. We had so much rain that it had softened the ground around the roots and along with the strong winds those oaks just came down. On the other hand, pine trees have more extensive root systems and with their flexible, pliable structure they sway in the wind they aren't as likely to topple over roots and all. They sometimes snap, but that's not really relevant to the root zymology.

I guess I sometimes see myself as that oak tree.

Sure, the stronger and deeper the roots, the less likely you are to get knocked down. But the oak still remains a symbol of strength and endurance. So, maybe having shorter roots is not so bad after all. And besides, I have now planted new roots of my own for my family.

I'd like to think, though, that a part of me will probably always be that "wildflower seed in the sand and wind."