The Others

When I was growing up in Rensselaer County in upstate New York, traffic jams were rare. There weren't enough cars on the road for that. The road I grew up on was a quiet dirt road with wild roses and those fabulous little wild strawberries that I waited for every year. The dust would fly when the rare car passed by, but over the years "the outsiders" grew to see the beauty of my little happy peaceful world, and the road was widened, the strawberries and the wild roses dissappeared. That was just the beginning of the invasion of "other humans" into my world. Now I'm fourty-something, and the people just keep coming. There are days I feel I'll go insane if I stay here much longer. Bumper to Bumper traffic in "my home town"? Cars racing to cut me off so they can be one car length ahead. Somehow these "others" get some satisfaction in being first. I was born in early July which makes me a Cancer, and how I want to retreat into my little protective shell and escape this crazy world. Times are changing, but I just want to go back to making my little mud pies and picking the warm sweet tiny wild strawberries. I fear that will not be happening here in upstate New York, but luckily for me I have a fabulous art studio tucked away on a dead-end road with no traffic. Well, of course, there is the car that drives up right past our signs that read "Danger," "Private Property, Keep Out." I'm assuming these people are unable to read English or they just have to know "what's up there." What's up there is my husband with a huge spotlight shining down on the driver of whatever stray car finds its way up here into our paradise, our own little private piece of this world, how dare they! They usually race back down the driveway fearing the large 6'1", 230 lb man with the big spotlight and the grumpy look. And so our little piece of the pie is quiet again, for now. But what is "quiet"? That's relative as I discovered in a recent trip to Nebraska, perhaps my "new paradise." I'll tell you more about that next time.