the bug-bitten bridesmaid (and other stories of belonging neither here nor there)

I have pink fingernails. 10 of them, capping tanned fingers that I no longer recognize as my own. As I sit here typing this, I occasionally catch a glimpse of shiny pink flying over the letters and I think, "what the hell!" I have pink bugbites. 10 of those, too, confined not only to the usual legs and arms, but also the chest and earlobe (really what the hell!). 7 of the bites (one a bloody scab) are in prime view when I wear my bridesmaid dress. Beautiful dress and shiny nails or not, did anyone really expect I could make it through this last month without at least one sunburn and several bugbites? I was not meant for gorgeous expensive dresses. But I love it nonetheless. I want to wear that dress terribly; it's easily the nicest piece of clothing I've ever owned. But I'm not quite there, bridesmaidwise. Love the dress, but not enough to look good in it. Not enough to commit to the whole package. I'll be there wearing it all right, but I'll be the one with the bugbites and tan lines and chipped nail polish. I'll be the one in some kind of bridesmaid nomansland.

Kind of like coming home. I grew up here in Virginia, and Greg and I often talk of someday moving back (maybe not here, exactly, but somewhere like it). Then I come here and I think, "Who would I talk to? Who would my friends be?" Would I ever really be able to belong here again?" Certainly I have friends here, but still I wonder.... I walked Oscar all over town tonight, in that kind of mood that inspires way too much thinking, and I realized how many things are different about Virginia. But many of them are the same, too, the thing that has changed the most is undeniably me. I can step out of the car here at night, a fresh arrival from St. Paul, and spend several minutes just sniffing the air. I love that smell....those of you who live here probably don't even recognize it. I can spend hours in the woods around here and want nothing more than to never leave again. But viewpoints can be a little different here sometimes. You have to watch what you say a little more carefully. You always run into someone you know who is gossipping about somebody else you know. There is often not a very worldly perspective on things. Sometimes you get the feeling that the world may very well end in the mine pit on the edge of town.

I can stand in my parents' driveway at the end of a stay up north and tell Greg, "I just want to go home." And we go, and it feels like exactly the way things should be. Other times we can arrive home in St. Paul and I will almost tear up, and say, "I want to go back home (up north)." Sometimes I belong in one place, and sometimes in the other, and more often than not, I belong in neither. I call them both "home," but it's not really true of either of them.

I've always had a very profound sense of place. Even as a very young child, I always had a special place to go to. When I was freshly 18 and knew almost nothing about the world beyond my parents' front door, I met an unlikely friend. He was 20 years my senior, and I tell this story rarely because I know how weird that sounds. But really, we just shared something that I'm not sure there's even a name for. Soul maybe comes the closest, but that's not quite it. There was just a part of us that was the same. He was about the freest person I've ever known. What he owned he could fit in his Camaro. He moved from here to there, working seasonally wherever he could. I wished terribly to someday have a life exactly like his. But as I watched him a little more, I realized that he was searching for something, too. Right then and there, I decided that people basically follow one of three paths: place, job, or person. And that no matter how free somebody may seem, they are usually not free of the desire to follow one of those paths. My friend seemed not to care which of the three that would be, he just wanted one, and the rest would just fall into place from there. I guess I thought I would always be a place person. Certainly it's what I thought back then, and I guess I still think it today, even while knowing that is has to be false.

But I still search for that place I belong, often forgetting that it's not a place at all.