Life Hacks for the Displaced, Volume 1 (Intro)
My family recently went camping.
To understand what a groundbreaking statement this is, you must know that the last time I attempted an overnight camping experience was when I was a Girl Scout in the fifth grade, and it ended with a phone call to my mom begging for an early pickup because the showers were “disgusting.”
This time around, though, there were no phone calls for a rescue, nor frantic forays into the Uber app for a car to shuttle me home. My husband and our two young sons and I made it through the weekend, along with the other three families on the trip. We were tired, weathered, and smelly by the end of it, but we made it.
One evening, while the campfire was being lit, first drinks were being poured, and kids and adults were still buzzing around a bit before settling into chairs and onto grass, I caught an early seat and grasped my sweaty plastic glass of sparkling wine while my friend’s husband curated his playlist. He asked me, the only other grownup paying attention, if he dared play “WAP” just to see what would happen.
“Obviously,” I replied.
So he did, and the two of us watched as the rest of the group darted between tents and to the bathrooms and from the creek, not even listening to the music or aware that the soundtrack to their activity included such lyrics as “bring a bucket and a mop” or “certified freak seven days a week” (and those are the non-NSFW ones).
The two of us laughed from the other side of our inside joke.
For much of my life, though, I’ve felt like I was on the outside of someone else’s inside joke, not hearing the music they were listening to. I had music, it just wasn’t the same as everyone else’s. My rhythm was off and my words and melodies were different. What I’m saying is that I’ve always felt like an outsider. And I think it’s been one of life’s greatest gifts.
Outsiders aren’t so comfortable that they feel like they can’t leave. Outsiders can observe without being noticed. They can take notes then take off to create something out of those notes. Being an outsider made me a writer. It also made me an escape artist--sometimes a willing one, other times not.
When I was twenty-seven and freshly graduated from a residency and everyone around me was getting married and I was so not, I moved to New York. When I met someone there and we moved to Atlanta and married and had kids and I read books about parenting that were all written about neurotypical kids, I was told my older son was on the autism spectrum. When our family was complete and we were settled into our first home, we were sent, via my husband’s job, to live in Sydney (where we remain, four-and-a-half years into a three-year relocation).
When I was in my early twenties and the Twin Towers fell, I turned for comfort to the 24-hour news cycle via Fox and Rush Limbaugh because they were what I had grown up hearing. When I was in my thirties and Donald Trump mocked the disabled and women on his way to the White House, I ended my history of straight-Republican voting and began to listen to voices on the other side of the political aisle.
When I was in college and a Black girl went through Greek rush, I voted against her joining our sorority because I came of age in an environment where racism was not only tolerated but expected and, as I became an adult, I didn’t have the courage to reject this. When I became a mother and watched the news cover another Black man killed by police as my children sat beside me, I realized that I’d been partaking of and serving poison my whole life.
When I was a teenager and an active member of my youth group, I wore a gold band as a promise ring signifying I wouldn’t have sex before marriage because--along with a litany of other behaviors--I thought this would solidify my standing with God. When I was in my twenties and thirties and broke some big commandments, I found that it wasn’t my promise-keeping that was meant to be my spiritual foundation or security.
I am not where I was, and many days I have no idea where I’m going. This road has been wild and unpredictable--this displacement from everything I thought was home and toward a new and unfamiliar place that somehow fits.
So I hope you’ll do what I as a child of the Eighties didn’t always, and buckle up while I take a tour through my own journey of displacement, through cultures and countries and worldviews and everything else imaginable. Maybe you’ll recognize some of the terrain. I don’t have a map, because those don’t work here. All the luggage I started with is stuffed with ill-fitting supplies, so I’ll share what’s turned out to fit better. This road will be twisty and messy and the soundtrack will include everything from “WAP” to poetry. We will definitely have to pull over and pitch a tent at times when it appears we’ve gotten lost, but here’s the deal: we don’t get lost on this road. We just get constantly, wonderfully, found. Somehow, we are always headed home.
“Welcoming Angels” by Pat Schneider
Between the last war
and the next one,
waiting for the northbound train
that travels by the river,
I sit alone in the middle of the night
and welcome angels.
Welcome back old hymns, old songs,
all the music, the rhyme and rhythm,
welcome angels, archangels,
welcome early guesses
at the names of things,
welcome wings.
I have grown tired of disbelief.
What once was brave is boring.
Welcome back to my embrace stranger,
visitor beside the Jabbok.
Welcome wrestling until dawn,
until it is my hip thrown out of joint,
my pillow stone, my ladder
of antique assumptions.
Welcome what is not my own;
glory on the top rung, coming down.
Wife, mom, dentist, writer, New Yorker, Southerner, Sydneysider, believer, sinner, overall case study in contradictions. @stephsphillips www.plansinpencil.com