April 13, 2003.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be An Old Woman


After I graduated from college in 1996, I moved from the rustic sanctuary of Rome, Georgia, back to Atlanta. My family lived in Atlanta, so coming back was like trudging home at the end of a long day — the only logical place to go for the inevitable fallout when you're a nervous 22-year-old graduating from college with a useless college degree, no career ambition, and a boatload of student loans about to ram the docks.

I adjusted quickly to life in Atlanta. I found an apartment and I found a job. I got a haircut and bought some office-y shoes and settled into life as a young adult.

One night a few weeks after my move back, I noticed a disturbing physical manifestation of my new home as I looked into the mirror. My eyes had been clear in Rome, but when I moved back to Atlanta, they turned red. A friend who knew me from Rome stopped me one day and looked closely at me and asked me if I was okay. I told him that I was. He gave me a look and asked me again.

They've been that way since 1996. Bloodshot and irritated, all the time.

It's the pollutants in the air, I'm sure. Atlanta has stupid, toxic air. Everyone drives everywhere here. Pedestrians are nuisances. The city was made for driving. And so my eyes are always irritated, red, burning. And I'm always in the car, driving everywhere, an hour to work, an hour back from work. On and on it goes.

It really annoys me. The bad air, the horrible traffic, the burning eyes.

Atlanta is a fine place, but it can be pretty toxic. It's a city, but it's not a city bustling with intelligent life. I think of it as a frustrated city. As much as I love it, I struggle with it — because it brings a lot of charms but just as many headaches.

Years ago, former mayor William Hartsfield dubbed Atlanta "The City Too Busy to Hate," but now I wonder if it's just become "The City Too Busy." It seems like I always have a million things to do. I feel a little silly saying something like that, because it's what everyone says these days. But it's true. And I hate that about my life. I have so little time for the things that I think really matter. For reading. For spending quiet time with friends. For walking in the woods, thinking about nothing and everything.

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When I think of myself as an old woman, I think of myself being someone who's kind and gentle. I see myself with a long grey braid down my back. I see myself as a wife, mother, and grandmother, sitting on the front porch of a wood-frame house, snapping beans for tonight's dinner.

I don't see myself as a woman who has spent her whole life driving for an hour to work only to arrive at a frustrating job, feeling harried and hassled.

What do I do with that image of myself as an old woman? Is it legitimate, or is it just a daydream? If it is real, shouldn't I at least try to start becoming that woman?

Lately I've been longing for greener pastures. And I guess I mean that literally. I can't shake the thought of packing up and getting rid of our things and moving out to the country. I want to find that wood-frame house out in the country. If I can't find it, I want to build it.

Two weeks ago I took a couple of days off work to go visit my older brother at the farm where he lives in east Georgia. He lives a few miles outside Athens, which is a pleasant little college town.

There's a piece of property across the street from my brother's place, right in the middle of Morgan County (which is right in the middle of nowhere). The property is for sale.

We jumped the fence and walked around and breathed in the scent of the earth. It's a beautiful piece of land, with a pond, and some gorgeous trees, and lovely slopes rising out from the rutted dirt driveway. It felt nice to stand on a piece of ground, and think, "I could live and die here, and it would be okay."

There is so much stuff I want to know how to do before I die. I want to be able to make a good pie crust, and fantastic flaky biscuits. I want to take apart an engine and put it back together and see how it all works. I want to be able to make my own clothes, maybe even my own furniture. (I note that these are all things that take time, effort, and patience. There is no quick payoff.)

Instead, I spend my days trying to figure out how to get my fonts to render properly in my PDF file. I pass idle moments trying to figure out how to make sure my creative director is happy with my performance. And I consider it a major personal triumph when my commute home takes me only 50 minutes, instead of 60.

Something's not adding up here.