We are back in Oklahoma for a much-needed vacation as well as a pre-holiday visit, spending the first part of the week with my parents in Norman and the second half of the week with Amy's parents in Edmond.
Good to bring Jasper back to see all his relatives (familial and otherwise, when it comes to my side) en masse. Good to see family ourselves. Weird, always, I think, to see how my hometown has changed for the better and the worse in the eight and a half years that I've been away. Weirder still to come back with our son to Norman, which makes me think of Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown."
Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around, this is your hometown
I had that conversation -- with myself, mostly -- oh, about nine years ago. I was getting out, one way or another. Not because of anything bad, but rather just because I knew there was more out there and I needed to go see some of it. Now, upon returning for a visit with Jasper, that's bittersweet in a way. This town was once mine, but it's not really anymore and it's not his, either, and I don't know if it ever will be.
Not that it should be, in my mind, though I know that drives a lot of people I love nuts. Whenever and wherever the time comes, 18 to 20 years from now, I hope Jasper goes out on his own to make his own way, to figure it out for himself, to make his own mistakes beyond the comfort of a safety net because I know how important that has been for me. I want him to know what's at his core -- Oklahoma, in some regards, yes, but the Northwest as well and who knows where else -- but to have the independence to stretch beyond whatever Amy and I have instilled in him and to make his own path wherever that will take him.
I think although I may communicate it a little differently than many, that's one of the goals for most any parent: To raise a child with all the love and support and tools they'll need to someday stand on their own. I know mine allowed me to do so -- even though my mother, in particular, hates it now. And I'm sure she's not alone in that.
Thing is, though, Oklahoma still feels -- to me -- too constricting. Right now, at least. Maybe that'll change someday. Today, however, I don't even know how I'd make a living here, how I'd feed my family. I drive around town and see storefront after storefront closed, in an oil-rich state that has thrived in eight years of an oil-driven administration. I see the hometown paper a shell of what it used to be, seemingly unable to adequately cover the big stories in its own backyard. I see the big local paper doing innovative things on some levels, things to be applauded and perhaps even emulated, but I also see it still lacking real depth and texture in its journalism. I see a hometown that, best I can figure, would hold one option for me -- a university job, if I could get one. A university job, no less, in a field in a state with a brain-drain problem. Regardless, though, at 31, I haven't been gone long enough, learned enough, experienced enough or simply had enough to settle for that.
I've caught up online recently with people I went to high school with, people who either stayed behind or already came back. Folks who -- and I don't say this critically because I'm certainly a creature of habit in my own ways -- are doing all the stuff we used to do 10 and 15 years ago. People who are coaching their kids in gyms they once played in themselves. People who are still invested in a football team to a wholly unhealthy degree. And I know it works for them, and I'm happy that it does, but it is not something I can imagine. It feels foreign to me, and part of that makes me sad -- not for me, but because I know others wish I felt differently.
Anyhow, I feel like on these trips I have to explain myself to some extent. So that was my attempt.
Now, for Karen in Stillwater (whose joy I've apprently been stealing due to my infrequent baby postings, my mom reports) and others wanting to see Jasper, here are some pictures of him with two of his aunts -- my sisters.
Jasper and Sarah.
Jasper and Chelsea.
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