Mom is Just a Nickname

Edinburgh…We didn’t spend too long there, but the time we spent there was memorable. We met other International Travelers. We saw the historic sites, including the castle. We saw some of the the nightlife of the city and enjoyed beautiful weather while we were there. I think it was in Edinburgh I first began to really feel the freedom of becoming an adult. (I was only 17 at the time!)

My sometimes overprotective brother gave me permission to go out on the town with an Australian fellow we’d met at our hostel. I can’t remember the man’s name and I can only guess that he was in his early twenties. At the time he seemed very much older and I kind of thought my brother had gone loopy. In any case, I had a good time with him. I think we maybe went to one bar, opted out of any nightclubs, and then spent the rest of the time walking through town while we talked. I very vividly recall debating about ‘the right to keep and bear arms’. He was vehemently against the public having guns, and even against law enforcement using guns. I argued the opposite (as one might expect of a girl who had been competing in rifle matches for years).

In contrast, there was the night in Edinburgh I went out with my brother. He decided it was his mission to teach me what college life would be like, so he got me drunk at every opportunity that summer. Edinburgh was no exception. Screwdrivers. I drank screwdrivers all night long because none of the pubs or bars we went in to had the ingredients to make anything else! Walking back to the hostel that night, my brother seemed to think it was hilarious to reach over and push me over with the tip of his finger. Yes, that’s how easy it was to make me stumble!

In Edinburgh, I bought my first Nina Simone cassette tape. I sat in our rental car, which was parked on the street in front of our hostel, and I listened over and over to that tape. I love her song “Feeling Good”!

My memories of the castle and historic monuments in Edinburgh are fuzzy. But the experiences I had there stand out in my mind. Someday, I’d like to go back and see the castle and such again so that I can remember them better. But I’m glad my trip to Britain wasn’t all dry history!

I don’t have an actual reason beyond “Because being at my computer hurts.”  Truthfully, being at my computer just makes the hurt worse.  I actually hurt a lot of the time, in one way or another.  I’m working with my doctor to find the cause.  Arthritis and fibromyalgia seem to be forerunners at the moment, with testing for things like lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, and various other things so we can rule them out.  We have to do that before a diagnosis of fibromyalgia can be seriously entertained.

So, I hope you’ll have patience with me as I post only sporadically.  I much prefer posting something every day, but that doesn’t seem very practical at the moment.

Choosing a place to write about for “D” should have been easy. I’ve lived in a number of places that start with “D”. I considered writing about Daytona, with the roaring race cars I remember from when I was 3 or 4. I considered writing about Delray, but decided that was too much like writing about Boca Raton. The one that popped into my head first and stayed there, though, was Defiance.

I had never heard of this small town in Northwest Ohio until I met the man who would become my husband. He grew up there; not quite a native but close enough. When I moved there in the early months of 1998, I was charmed by the small, rural town. The downtown has quaint shops and restaurants to wander. There are parks, which are great for the kids. The library is an architectural treasure and the land on which it sits is historically significant and beautiful. There are towering trees which provide shade, lilac bushes that scent the air each spring, and broad rivers which define the landscape of the downtown. Many of the homes are quite old and beautiful, with lovely gardens and lawns to admire. All of this can be seen by walking, too, since the sidewalks make it possible to stroll all over the place without competing with car traffic.

The people that live there have long memories and long histories. Even as the landscape of the town has changed through the years (it’s changed quite a bit even since I first lived there) the people remember how it used to be. More than once I felt totally lost when asking for directions since the landmarks used were often for places and stores that no longer existed.

I remember walking into the library to get my library card. (I rarely move to a new place without doing this first thing, since I’m so addicted to reading.) It was shortly after I got married and I was still trying out my new last name. The librarian, an older woman, looked at the name I’d written and looked at me. “Which of the boys did you marry, then?” she asked. I blinked at her, totally confused that she seemed to know my husband. Her words confirmed this as she recalled watching my husband and his brother come into the library as children, and talked about how my in-laws were now her neighbors. I had this scenario happen more than once as I settled into life in the small town. It was a new experience for me and I found it charming.

If you like to travel to new places via book or video, check out ‘The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio’. It was originally a book, but it’s also been made a movie. The movie wasn’t actually shot in Defiance, but it gives a fair feel for the town, even now. Reading the book was a tour through some of the history of the town, and I loved being able to look at the 1950′s pictures in the book and recognize places in town.

I moved to Defiance, OH in ‘defiance’ of my parents’ strongest recommendations. (Did I mention I abruptly withdrew from college and moved West with a man I had met on the internet? That went over really well at the time.) Six years later, I left Defiance of two minds: one was happy to be leaving the small town to go to a bigger town that had more options and the other was sad to leave the small town with it’s charm, history and personality.