We look podunk; we have a 3 legged truck in the yard, more cars than people, and a filing cabinet on the front porch. Our grass ends up being half cut most of the time, and hardly ever edged. In fact I took to just killing off the grass around the edge of our house with roundup to save from weed-eating it. The back yard is a sandpit where we took out a pool and is constantly littered with wrenches and kudzu.

Inside, all the ‘white’ doors have a hint of pink to them, the floor stops in the middle of the hallway where it hasn’t been finished and you can’t pull the light cord attached to the fan in the master bedroom or it’ll break off and snap back in your face.

These are the things I tell myself while we pack up two years of memories and move.

I may have a flair for being a teeny little bit dramatic. “The End of the World” or “The Worst Day EVER”, are extremely likely to be heard from me, when the toothpaste runs out or another catastrophic event. I’m sure this does wonders for my worrying and stress issues.

So yesterday when the house we’re supposed to be moving into today wasn’t ready, I could see my own personal comet coming to Earth to end me. I had all these plans for cleaning, painting, and moving, what am I supposed to do now?? What if we don’t even get the house???

But today I am being very Zen. I will let it go. Let go of anxiety, let go of anger, just let it go. And today will be a good day.

I don’t know who genetically I got it from, but I’m a worrier. Like if I was born in the 1800’s I would have been that wife that had to go lay down in the middle of the afternoon with the windows drawn shut because she worried herself sick. They’d close the blinds in on me and tell me to just relax in the darkness so I wouldn’t get worked up. I’d lay there in the faux night with my eyes open thinking, “Is my heart pounding too fast?” or “I can feel my spine crushing my heart.”

I might have always been a little bit of a worrier, but never like this. Never the kind that keeps you awake at night or bother you all day at work. It’s why I compulsively list. If I write it down I’ll never forget and I can always look back on it and worry later.

List of things to ask my doctor:

My heart being irregularly/too fast

My scoliosis getting worse

J’s eye fungus

J’s skin cancer

J’s 30!

Then I end up with 10 lists full of things to do and worry about, so instead of even looking at them again, I just take a nap.

And fields in my heart. No ocean can compare to the way waves of corn fields calm me. I suddenly feel whole watching the sun break through clouds over hay bales and white farm houses. I can finally take deep breaths of clean air again. There is no serenity like that of home.

I love being able to look out the window and see something besides a wall of trees covered in kudzu. Here there are trees among gravel roads, lining property lines and lawns. Brown fields even look lovely to me. It is the scenic view of my childhood, of my adolescence, and the openness my adulthood craves.

“Please pray for peace and rain” a sign we drive by says. Peace and rain. That’s all my soul needs. Rain over a field, peace over my heart.

My grandmother has actually told me to marry the first time for money, the second time for love. Although coming from the woman who has been married to the same man for  60+ years… I take that advice with a grin. It became a joke anyway since J told me he was “loaded”, although he didn’t specify that he was actually loaded with bullets and not money.

But I’m pretty sure One Is For Luck. Because as my dad says only J can “step in dog shit and pull out gold.”

Only my husband would break a trailer on the drive to vacation (that part is the dog shit), and end up straight trading with the welder who fixed it for a bigger trailer. Only J could trade a broken tool for 4 truck tires, and have the other guy leave with a smile. He’s a-wheeler-and-a-dealer, and gives the saying “I married the luckiest man in the world” a whole new meaning.