Just Me

A few days ago, an old friend made a comment about me during our high school days,  and it has got me to thinking that now I am  not quite the girl that friend once knew.  A year or two ago, a former professor of mine and I had an online discussion about the importance of occasionally re-inventing one's self.  Some people probably think that is what I have been doing lately, what with the move to the farm and job change and all.  However, I don't really feel that way.  Instead of reinvention, I feel like I might have just found the niche I have been looking for.

I grew up half country kid, half town kid.  We lived at the edge of a small town, close enough to the pool to ride there on my bike.  Close enough to school to walk and not ride the bus.  On the other hand, I once had a spell of having to milk a goat every morning, and I remember keeping bottle calves in the field behind our house.  My dad was the ag teacher.  My mom grew up on a farm and always had a garden and canned and sewed.  We spent holidays and summers at my grandparents' farm.  In high school, I was always in ag.  I was also the academic sort of kid who actually thought trig was fun.  I wasn't the fashionable, homecoming queen girl or the cute, spunky cheerleader.  I was the girl in the school greenhouse or the girl with the library book.  Looking back, I probably seemed stuck up or stand off-ish to others, but I  really just didn't know what to say to anyone.   In college, I shed the country girl image, but kept the academic image . . . and probably the stuck up image, though I didn't realize until later.   In retrospect, I don't think I ever quite felt comfortable in any of these roles.  They just weren't quite entirely me even though they were parts of me.  Later, I became an English teacher.  Then, I became a wife and, eventually, a mother.  Those were important additions to the parts that make up me, but  I spent a lot of time worrying about the sort of student, teacher, wife, or mom that I should be instead of . . . well, just being.  

He won't be getting this shirt back

 I feel pretty good about where I find myself now.  I don't care much anymore that my sewing is awful or that I am not good with small children.  I don't even care that I don't like Nathaniel Hawthorne (there probably isn't a rule that English teachers who shun Hawthorne are burned at the stake).  It is okay if I am not Betty Crocker or Ree Drummond or any of those amazing homemakers out there.  I am certainly not my mother.  Instead, I am who I am.  I am best when I get to workout.  I just really don't like brown rice and whole grain pasta, even if they are supposed to be healthy.  I don't even like arugula.  Instead, I would gladly eat cool whip straight from the container.  I have learned that I don't really like to wear make up, so I mostly don't.  I love to cook but am terrible at getting an entire meal to all finish cooking at the same time.  I love to dig and muck about in the garden. I think I am young and not old yet.   I haven't owned cowboy boots since I was 18 and probably won't ever again, but I love Jack's old Navy shirt and a pair of old deck shoes for my summer garden uniform and plaid school girl skirts and riding boots for  winter attire.  

I used to worry a lot about not being the sort of wife Jack needed or the sort of mom that Bell needed.  I worried about not being the right sort of teacher.   I don't worry so much anymore.  Everyone seems okay with the me they got.  I think Jack's willingness to let me figure out who I am might be one of the best gifts he has given me.   He never expects me to fit some image.  Some days, he gets a baker.  Some days a filthy gardener.  Some days it is the girl saying, "listen to this" and then reading him a passage from a book.  Today, the wife he got was one who will feed him leftovers because I want to finish a desk I am working on.  All those parts work pretty well together.  They feel right.