Choosing the Un-Hip Home "2 Years In"

In all my wildest imaginings of where I would find home I did not expect to find myself in Tulsa Oklahoma. I have chosen to have a place and community I call my own regardless of where it is. I have lived many places in my life, mostly in the Northern states. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. As a teen I spent a lot of my time on a Metro North train bound for New York City exploring the city with a tight circle of friends in the surrounding Tri-state area. As a young adult with a taste for adventure I moved myself across the country to Seattle where rainbow flags lined the streets and the breath taking beauty of the natural world made me vibrate with emotion. While nannying on the side I would save all my money and go travel in Europe and South America.

After becoming a parent my priorities changed. I wanted family, I wanted people that were as dedicated to raising my kids as I was. I flirted with the idea of returning to the land my people are from. Though I grew up in the North, my parents are from this Southern land. My husband’s family lives in Tulsa. For a soft move to see if we could really live in this part of the country we moved to Austin, Texas. It is a reclaiming of my heritage to return to the south. While in Austin I watched as the tech industry took over this small, hip town. I really liked the city but watched as the rent price went up and my neighborhood became too expensive to live in. This is when Tulsa started looking like the right place for us to live.

My new home is buried deep in the Mid-South in a red state, and so be it. I say screw moving for a job, screw the idea of moving to the over inflated markets of hip, liberal, coastal cities and living dirt poor under the confines of cool. Screw all that, I am moving to Tulsa. I am excited, exploring like a little worm investigating the interior of a ripe apple. What layers does this city hold for me? What opportunities can our family glean from this place? What can I bring here? These questions lie on the surface of this overwhelming sensation of, I am home! I don’t have to move again!

I chose simplicity, a life based on connection to loved ones, a do-able place where I don't have to live on the edge and can write from the fringe. A place I can afford to live in and be able to buy tickets to visit the people I love in those above-mentioned hip, liberal, coastal cities. It is a relieving feeling having a place called home. My cancer crab nature has been looking for roots my whole adult life.

I live now in the land of my husband’s family. I live in the state my dad was raised in. I am circling back into a web that I cast aside in my younger adulthood. I want my kids to know their grandparents. I want to have big family dinners and be able to know that people here have my family’s back. These desires outweighed the red flag warnings of moving to a place where I knew I would be fish out of water. In Tulsa my punk/queer history could easily slip under the surface and into hiding.

Going undercover with my radical nature has been a part of living in the South. I had to get used to this upon moving to Texas a few years ago. I am now more selective with whom I share what. When I was younger it was all about in-your-face confrontation. Living on the edge meant being your self no matter what. Now I see I can be myself and not share all that comes into my head. I can think my opinions and still get along with folks very different from me. This is a great skill to adopt.

In some ways this place is sheltered from the harsh realities of a competitive city. Tulsa says: “welcome! Here is a new opportunity or possibility for you.” And Ha! In my face! It can be hip here. Tulsa has a thriving alternative scene complete with artists, climate change activists, hippie farmers, entrepreneurial young couples and pug lovers. Not as many radicals as in the Northwest, but still freaky people choosing to live here.

One of the biggest differences I notice is the lack of transplants here. Spending all my 20's and late teens in the transient North West it is so odd for me to be around all these people that come from this place. There are also folks that never left. I have seen stylish, young Okies selling fermented preserves, sporting handle bar mustaches and wearing ironic T-shirts like the best of them never having left their hometown. There is a lot of hometown pride here. I see many a shoulder adorned with a tattoo that outlines the state with a heart over Tulsa.

When I move to a place I learn all about it.  I study the history, culture, and natural marvels of the place. Tulsa is old. The actual rock that makes up the land is filled with fossilized shells. Prairie grass still rolls around some parts of North East Oklahoma. They call this land Green Country. The wind can howl through you and bring with it the cold weather. There is a Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival. Where the attendees watch as a Prairie Chicken “displays” on its gobbling grounds. One day I will make it to this festival and chortle happily.

This place is native as well. Native American culture surrounds the dominating white culture. I thought of this a lot when I first moved here. Making connections into the Native community is important to me, but it has not been easy. It is easy to surround myself in predominantly white culture and forgot about the fact that this is Native land. I feel it even more living in Indian Territory and seeing tribal plates everywhere.  I notice it when I see entering and existing reservation signs on the roadside. What does it mean to enter Cherokee land? Land that was given to Cherokees that was not even their ancestral land? I am 1/16th Cherokee and I am still figuring out what that means and how to claim it as a person of the predominant white culture while still being real.

I have gotten good at moving and remaining authentically me no matter where I live.  I still feel a part of the East coast and West coast within me. I carry both cultures as well as a good Southern twang now. After a couple of years here, I have settled in, and it seems that Tulsa and I have blended. We have grown together. Maybe my edgy east coastness has been toned down, and maybe Tulsa has taken a step towards being a touch more liberal. Maybe I just fell in with the right crowd. I believe it is a combination of all these things.  Something about getting older has made me feel more grounded in the person I am, not striving anymore to be something greater, or in a particular culture that I have to fit into. I am home for now and it feels so good.

      

      

The Burning Hot Nanas

There is a "gentleman’s club" my daughter and I pass on the way to her Pre-K. It is a place right in the middle of a busy, family oriented neighborhood strip. Her dance school is a few blocks down, its surrounded by a vet office, plant nursery, restaurant and violin shop. I don't know how the club came to be there but there it is, right in our faces as we drive from point A to point B. I find the place sleazy & do my best to ignore it.

One day my very observant Pre-K kid asked me about the place. "Mama, why is there a picture of burning hot nanas on that building?" (nanas is a friendly term for breasts we used when she was breast feeding, pronounced nah-nahs.) The strip club has its name emblazoned on a red sign with women's nude torsos engulfed in flames. This is it, that horrible moment where I have to decide how to explain to my daughter the exploitation of women in our culture. I rack my brain for the most simplified response I can imagine. "Well, honey, the person that owns that business put up that sign. What do you think of that sign?" a pause from the back seat, "I don't like it." Neither do I honey." Another pause, then she says, "We should tell them to take it down. " I said “yes that is a great idea."

After our talk I was motivated and ready to put pen to paper and give this business a piece of my mind! But by the time we got home a million other thoughts had swept through my head and we were onto the next thing. We pass by this place a few times a week. Since  the initial conversation Sweetpea sometimes notices the nanas and sometimes does not.  When she does notice she says. "I don't like that sign, let’s tell them to take it down." I have told her to not look if it bothers her. I have told her yes it bothers me too and I agree we should ask to have it taken down. Finally after many excuses I told her we will write to them she just needs to remind me when we are home and by paper and pen.


I started to get a daily reminder, "Remember mama to write to the place with the burning hot nana sign." This reminder comes to me in the same vein as " Remember to take out the garbage." I tuck her into bed and she reminds me to write the place with the burning hot nana sign. I am fixing her snack and she reminds me again. Its incredible how something so intense and confusing as talking about sexual exploitation of women has become such a run of the mill conversation in my home.

One night I finally set the wheels in motion and started the letter. I am tired of feeling worn down by offensive media. I am tired of accepting the BS that says this world is just crappy and we can't do anything about it.  Even if they don't take down the sign I know it’s important to write the letter. It’s important because I want to show my daughter that we can try to make change. She needs to know that we can state our opinions no matter what. Also, that stating her opinion makes things better. In my ideal world there would not even be a strip club my daughter and I would have to interact with. Confronting the burning hot nanas is giving us a chance to say what we want in our community with our voices. This is a powerful step against sexism and towards empowerment even if the nanas continue to burn.

Foot note: To all women/mothers working in the biz and ex-sex workers this is not about what you do. We all have to make money and for some this is the most reliable option. I salute you in your efforts to pay bills and raise families as a female in this society. We are all in this together.

   

  

Spring Crush

The spring is my favorite season, the open possibility, the re-generation of life spelled out in millions of plants and trees. It is the season of green, deep, passionate green. Spring is for romantics, something I have always been. The sensuality of spring holds some of my favorite memories. I have lived through many springs in all parts of the beautiful United States. I want to take a moment to examine the spring of Oklahoma and how it looks up against the backdrop of growing up in Connecticut, my northwest home and plant education and my more recent central Texas life. I am sentimental this time of year for all the places I have lived and miss elements of the spring in each place. 

In Connecticut it was all about the crocus. The elusive lady friend peeking up in grassy patches marking the end of the freezes. The ones with purple and white stripes were my favorites. I love their little pointy striped leaves and the sweet surprise of happening upon them in bunches across wet tracks of city parks. The cherry blossoms lining Wooster square were another New Haven favorite. As a teenager I walked through the park with a camera in hand taking pictures of friends covered in petals laughing with flowers in our hair as we witnessed the beauty of a hundred pink and white blooming trees.  

In the Northwest this season was marked with love, the ending of the dreary season and the possibility of warmth, shedding the under layers and being awe struck underneath blooming plum trees. This was the season of pretending you are not cold when you leave your jacket at home on a hopeful sunny afternoon turned stormy evening. Then waiting at a bus stop stomping your feet to stay warm and shivering through spring! The season of flirty smiles, longer evenings and enchanted bike rides. My friends and I always seemed to go on more dates in the Spring. It was time to start noticing people after the long, wet winter. Clumps of violets bloomed under oak trees and trillium would pop up under cedars as delicate and magical as a fairy. I traveled north to the Skagit valley to immerse in the color of the tulip fields. Thousands of varieties maybe only ever seen before in Holland to the back drop of huge, blue mountains and deep white clouds. I never had as much love for a cultivated plant as when I saw the brilliance of a field of red tulips. 

 In Texas spring is wild flower season, I think it may be the prettiest spring I have ever experienced. The weather warms up to sundress standards and there you are experiencing sunshine and a million varieties of wild plants. Fields of flowers grow on the side of the highways; purple, orange and deep black cones dot every field and lot. The trees come back in full force and electric green blankets the earth. And blue bonnets, blue bonnets, and blue bonnets! Warm and happy you skip around to all the various out door music experiences Austin has to offer. We always took portraits of our family in the flowers. Is there anything so primal as a wild flower? I am convinced the essence of passionate nature lies in the throat of crimson clover. In our yard after a good rain the rain lilies would peek up their heads. A sister to trillium in the northwest these plants are like congratulations for making it through a flash flood, a little white angel of hope in our yard.

In Tulsa it is all about the azaleas. It seems every one here thought it was a marvelous idea to plant this bush in their yard the cumulative affect is the most radiant extreme hedges of color everywhere you look for at least a month. You get so much return with these bushes I am surprised I have not noticed them before living in Tulsa. The bush is filled with blossoms in the colors of white, fuchsia, baby pink, orange, deep red and yellow.  They are like the little sisters of rhododendron, all show and punch. Another plant this town does well is dogwood trees. I have never truly appreciated the dogwood tree till moving here. The elegance of this tree is regal. It comes in white or pink and the underside makes the most perfect cookie cutter shape. The majestic red bud of this region is also a local favorite. Tiny pink blossoms grow up the trunks and branches of the tree and bring a sweet dark pink beginning to the season.

Spring is in my lungs from all the pollen, my back from all the yard work and my heart from all the love of the cultivated and wild plants of this land.

Radically Choosing The Un-Hip Home

In all my wildest imaginings of where I would find home I did not expect it to be Tulsa Oklahoma. After two weeks here I am still in the newness, first blush of a place I plan to live for a long time to come. I am excited, exploring like a little worm investigating the interior of a ripe apple. What layers does this city hold for me? What opportunities can our family glean from this place? What can we bring here? These questions lie on the surface of this overwhelming sensation of, I am home! I don’t have to move again!

I have chosen to have a place and community I call my own regardless of where it is. I have lived many places in my life, mostly in the Northern states. I grew up in New Haven Connecticut. As a young adult I lived mostly in the Northwest with a lot of travel to Europe and South America. Most recently I moved from Austin Texas.  My new home is buried deep in the Mid-South in a red state, so be it. I say screw moving for a job, screw the idea of moving to the over inflated markets of hip, liberal, coastal cities and living dirt poor under the confines of cool. Screw all that, I am moving to Tulsa. And Ha! in my face, it is hip here. Tulsa does have a thriving alternative scene complete with artists, climate change activists, hippie farmers, entrepreneurial young couples and pug lovers. Not as many radicals as in the Northwest but still choosing to live here. Making this place work from an alternative vantage point.

What I feel I chose is simplicity, a life based on connection to loved ones, a do-able place where I don't have to live on the edge and can write from the fringe. A place we can afford to live in and be able to buy tickets to visit the people we love in those above-mentioned hip, liberal, coastal cities. It is a relieving feeling having a place called home. My cancer crab nature has been looking for roots my whole adult life. I love the sense of time I feel in getting to know this place. There is no urgency to get to know everything right away. I can move at a tortoise pace and watch the flowers of opportunity unfurl before me.

I am living the life of an autodidact, playing with my 3 1/2 year old companion, checking out library's, museums, parks and cozying into communal living with my in laws as we make way for the huge adventure of becoming first time home buyers. 

Something about getting older has made me feel more grounded in the person I am, not striving anymore to be something greater, or in a particular culture that I have to fit into. And gosh, people are so friendly and humble here. I am really enjoying the laid back attitude of this place. I am home for now and it feels so good.

Tulsa, Where The Wind Comes Blowing Down The Plain

Hi Yip! we made it. A week of full force, months of preparations, a complete cleanse right before the journey and now a settling into our new home of Tulsa OK. After two days it has not sunk in yet. This is where we are going to live. This is the place we chose to be our own. This is the place the pros and cons list showed to many pros to ignore.

Partly why I don't feel settled is because our first home here is the place we have been visiting for years. Being at my in laws house is like being in my vacation home. Its both pleasing and disconcerting, I feel safe and welcomed in and at the same time antsy to shape this new place as my own. Our plan is to live here for a few months then buy our own house. I am choosing to take this all one day at a time. We have unloaded boxes and organized clothes, Daddy starts work on Monday, These first steps are making this place feel more like home. An icy snow storm hit today and hardy Okies barely batted an eyelash. The cafe we went to was crammed with people per any typical Sunday morning. My wimpy Northwest/Texas winter self has to get re-accustomed to living in ice and snow. The storm should melt in a few days, in time for the first hints of spring to appear.

Sweetpea and I will be exploring this town via foot, pedal and public transport, getting to know our new local library, fun parks to play at and freeish family activities. The Pea starts preschool two days a week on Tuesday. This will be her first real preschool experience. Up until now she went to a small country day care and an in home care with just two other kids. I am excited for her to have this experience, preschool was one of my happiest childhood memories. I loved playing three little pigs under chairs with other kids, singing songs and doing circle clapping games. I also loved my teacher. I hope Sweetpea warms to it in a similar fashion.

While she is at school mama will be preparing for my big art exhibition. I got into the New Genre's Art festival and will be showing my installation "Sweetpea's Gestation" for the month of April in a gallery down town. I will also be looking for more teaching artist work and grounding as an artist in our new home. As my friend Gill said, "You will be big fish in a small pond." This feels just about right for now.

This has all come together on a leap of faith, believing everything would happen in due course, gathering the support we needed to make it work and acting on what we think will be best for our family. So now we join in the love of a new community. So mote it be.