Reinvention

I was just talking with some friends about how I reinvented myself when I left Texas and moved to Ohio for graduate school. Looking back on it I realized that although I had been a fairly unconventional Texan when I lived in the Lone Star State, once I left the constraints of its borders I became a walking example to Ohioans of all that a Texan is. I became someone who always wore make-up, always wore an 'outfit' (so much so that people often asked me where I was going, sure that I couldn't have arrived at my final destination when I was clearly so overdressed for where we were and what we were doing). I was a girl who always had her hair done - and done big (the higher the hair, the closer to God), favoring a high ponytail accessorized with a bow. I relished my Texas accent, used the phrase 'fixin' to' as often as possible and stuck a "y'all" in whenever appropriate.

I extolled the virtues of the Texas landscape, her people, her cultural institutions and culinary gifts - missed the Texas Two-Step and Country music; even though I'd been a fan of none of these things while growing up...

The opportunity to be a stranger in a strange land offered up the chance to be a curiosity and I loved it. I got to shed the things I'd carried around with me that I didn't like and take on new characteristics that were off-limits to me when I might run into someone I'd known since the third grade. On the Ohio University campus I was never going to run into someone who'd known me my entire life -- no one was going to say, "Wow, what happened to you?" It was a freedom that is lost to me now. Now I'm part of a community: at church, school and work. That's why it is so important to do it while you're young - and I hope my boys do that too. They should go away to college, to the East Coast or the Mid-West. Maybe when I retire we could run away again, Doug and me. Maybe we'll find that freedom again. Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your name...