A new leaf

     It felt like heaven that evening in May, zipping up the hill in the new BMW, my Banana Republic dress flapping against my skinny legs as I pumped the gas with high heeled strappy sandals. Maroon 5 pulsed from my crisp German speakers, and I smiled deeply, completely, whistling and head-bopping and thinking to myself that I had moves like Jagger too. Life could be good again, I had survived. For three long years I had struggled with a mysterious illness in Oregon, spending much of that time huddled in bed under a sandwich of flannel sheets and fleece pajamas while the entire Pacific Ocean dripped down on our dream home day after day. Three years of days where you weren't sure if the sun had really come up entirely, of cold feet, cold skin, ambulance rides and lines at the pharmacy. I had a favorite vein for blood draws, and had become precise with filling those lab cups in the bathroom. Three years of struggling with a foster baby and another new baby just a year apart, a husband who was profoundly unraveling under the shock of caring for five young kids, a disabled and panicked wife, a struggling business, and a massive home-building adventure.
     I remember a span of about 6 months where I never left home except by ambulance, never left my bed without incident really, and thought I'd never be normal again in this life. Our home had a beautiful forest behind it in the summer when we bought the property, and I had spent so much of my life in Arizona that I didn't realize the leaves would fall off in winter and leave the home behind us exposed. From my bed that winter I memorized every line and curve, every shingle and shutter and beam and brick on that home. I knew when the man in the 3rd window from the right woke up, opened the blinds, sat in a chair and watched TV. I always wondered what he watched, but couldn't see the screen. My greatest wish was just to be able to walk down the hall to my kids' bedrooms and read them a book at night, but the hallway was so long and I was too weak. So instead I suffered in bed, looking out the windows at the stranger through the naked forest, thinking how much I was like those trees. I had gone my whole life not knowing who I was under all the fluff. If I had to describe myself, I would've talked about my hobbies, how I had mastered Crepes Suzette, and the miles and miles I had logged in my running shoes. I was a busy and loving mom, a caring neighbor, an avid reader who plowed through a couple books a week, mostly historical or political works. I gardened and raised chickens and entertained friends in our million dollar house, and my yoga mat was as well used as my Bible. And then all the leaves came falling off my tree and I had to look for the first time at who I was underneath it all. Suffering does that to you like nothing else.
     We woke up early one morning after Christmas, black rain pounding the windows, and decided to call it quits and run back to Arizona, buy a new Tuscan house in our old fancy neighborhood on the hill and try to be our old selves again. I received a diagnosis the first week back, sitting at the kitchen counter in my best friend's house. Her doctor dad said he thought I had Valley Fever, wrote something on a post-it note and told me to call some doctor and have some test done. A $40 blood test solved a big part of my mystery and I was 50% better than I had been in a few years after the first tiny pink antifungal pill. It was easy to walk down the hall and read books to toddlers in bed at night and none of the local paramedics got to know me for a while. I had survived. What more appropriate locale than Phoenix, named for the mythical bird warrior rising from the ashes. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt anything, and it really was heaven. The sun was just setting behind my BMW that evening, and it took my breath away as I came to a turnout at the top of the hill, massive gated homes and shiny Jaguars underscoring the fiery sky. I was me again, back in my old life! But. But, but something was off and it took me a bit of time to figure out that I had seen the real me right down to my roots and this wasn't it. It was a hollow sort of happy.
     We spent a few months trying to get it right, almost losing our sweet daughter, undergoing a nightmare surgery and being told I was going to die of c-diff afterwards. We ate stress for breakfast. Life was hard on the inside, but looked so good on the outside. My husband started drowning his anxiety in a mindless TV show called "Duck Dynasty", and I got sucked into it too while I recovered. I know it's a TV show and there's more to life than what you see on screen, but I couldn't believe how relaxed and content those hillbillies seemed. Totally different than my life in every way. It's funny the way life falls into place, but I thought of those Robertsons the day my life fell off a cliff. We had come home after midnight from our long Christmas vacation, only had a couple hours of sleep. My sweet friend Britty texted me to ask if I could watch her little ones that morning, but I was hiking, standing on top of the world in the January sunshine. I didn't text her back, forgot all about it in the middle of unpacking and getting ready for school. Later that evening I sat down to a bowl of soup when my iphone beeped. "Your friend Britty hung herself this morning". Twenty minutes after I didn't text her back. She went into her closet in her pretty house in her fancy gated home in our great neighborhood and hung herself, leaving her young children. In those days afterward my leaves fell off again, and I saw that my roots and trunk were dying under the stress of a life that is supposed to be what everyone is living for, and I just wanted to disappear, to hide my face and slow down. Like those Duck Dynasty people, and the author of our book club book, "A Dirty Life", who ran away to marry an organic farmer and live like a pioneer in upstate New York. I needed to get out, to literally step out of my world, shed every leaf, and disappear for a while.
     And that is how we became Southerners. I have a closet full of pretty clothes I have no occasion to wear, a husband who rotates through various camo ensembles, a son who has a cross-bow stacked on top of violins in his bedroom, and a freezer full of peach jam and venison. In the blink of an eye we gutted who we are, and it's remarkably stressless. My best friend is a 91 year-old Civil War buff, and I jog with a raggedy pack of neighbor dogs. If my grandma could just see me now! I've turned over a new leaf for sure.