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If you read my last post about moving 3,000 miles with only $21 and two Greyhound bus tickets, you may have left scratching your head thinking, "what a fool!" Perhaps. If you've known me for even a short time you know that I have never lived anywhere very long. My dad's job transferred us so often when I was growing up that I had attended 13 schools before graduating high school. On the go has always been my normal and remarkably, my life has been full of stability thanks almost entirely to my mother - the same person who used to tease me for hanging onto my last $1 bill as if a $1 bill will buy you out of much trouble. She used to always tell me, "God takes care of fools and little children". What grounds us is not always the earth beneath our feet and home is not always a geographic location.
At some point in my life I realized that the earth is round and I lost my fear of surviving each day. Once I knew that there are no cliffs from which I might fall into an eternal abyss and found that I would always land, somewhere, somehow. The gravity of life would catch me with each passing day and I would stumble, or crawl, or walk, skip, or run into the next. But life would not end simply because I had made my best attempt to live it.
So how did it all work out? Or did it?
It's been a fun and funny few months. Our daily obstacles have been all farce. We made a dining table out of the box that our air mattresses arrived in. I called my friend Robin, "the light bulb went out in the dining room. I can't afford a light bulb and I don't own a ladder (or a chair) so we're eating in the living room now." A few days later, "well, the light bulb went out in the living room now too." It's the sort of thing you wouldn't normally say out loud but it's just so funny too. It took a couple of more days but we scraped up the money for light bulbs and a ladder. We even bought some really cool chairs
People told us that rural Tennessee would be a culture shock after living in Los Angeles for the past eight years. Tennessee has been a relief - not the culture shock people might expect.
We had been here three days when we ran out of food, gas, and cash. We had planned making it through this move by selling our crafts and we still had the bags full of things to sell and also some of the boxes that had been shipped and left on our front porch. I think our feet were stuck. We were sort of afraid to move for fear of making the wrong move - playing our last card on a losing bet. Running on empty forced us out of the house though. I called my fried Robin in Texas, "ACK!!! Can you believe it!! I was totally out of food, money, gas, etc... Not a shred of hope and we went across the street to a little store we found and they bought $275!!!". I was so excited. I wanted to call my dad but I knew he would freak so I called his sister and told her. Finally I got up my guts and called him.
It wasn't so much a surprise as a victory. Bonnie and I have wholesaled to stores for over 20 years. We just gave it up for a while in Los Angeles and then I think we lost our nerve a bit. The sale itself wasn't so much but the victory of it was huge. We made it!
We didn't make it here with some vital necessities though: sewing machine, patterns, glue guns, knitting needles. We didn't make it with fabric or anything to work with. All of this we've had to start of scratch on - replacing, rebuilding, re-creating. For the first 10 weeks Bonnie had her sewing machine on the fireplace hearth and sitting on an inflatable, yellow, wedge exercise pillow for a chair. We had packed two of these in our carry on on the Greyhound coming out here and they doubled as beds for the first 9 weeks as well. I eventually replaced them with inflatable air beds that convert to couches (the same ones that arrived in our dining room table box)- very comfortable by the way. I may have kept them if they had lasted longer than a few weeks. We were able to pack Bonnie's silicone bakeware but not plates, cups, silverware, the basics. So we have a quirky set up of empty jars for glassware and Bonnie's "one" prize pan purchased after we got here. The lid doubled as one of our two plates for a couple of months - more fun than a dribble cup. We've lived for months and even years on end "on the road", living and sewing out of hotels to survive in years past. I have always said that my mother is the only person I know that can make a full course, gourmet meal in an electric tea pot and a hotel ice bucket. She has a knack for improvised genius that is unparalleled. Among her high points were the tin foil created "fancy silver Christmas dinnerware" she dreamed up in 1996 when we spent 7 weeks in the Clarion Suites hotel in Williamsburg, VA on one of our 19 month excursions crafting our was across the country. She accidentally lit the hotel curtains on fire with her improvised, tin foil candelabra. Lucky we're good with sewing machines and travel with them - the hotel never figured it out. We giggle at our bouts of intermittent poverty throughout life and have to agree that our most creative moments, our most successful designs, our most memorable personal events all share a common link of necessity and desire. Having nothing to work with brings for something we would have never dreamed up otherwise.
In the first twelve weeks we've scoured Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, as well as Arkansas and Texas on the way out here selling our handmades.
I should have registered my car and obtained Tennessee drivers licenses within the first 30 days but when 30 days had come and gone we were still puttering along trying to scrape up the second months rent. I rumpled up the paper dealers tag in my back window and threw it under the seat. No point in advertising what I can't fix yet. It took a while but it was worth the wait. I do love the Tennessee DMV. It's the best drivers license photo I've ever had & they didn't make me take a test to get it.
Our first couple of months here are a blur of cutting, sewing, selling. Early in week three we scraped up enough money for sewing machine, scissors, fabrics - the necessities. We were still sleeping on the hard tile floors in our new home under yardage of fabrics from our personal stash. Not so comfortable. We definitely did more work than sleeping in these first few weeks. We planted tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and spices out back; flowers out front, pulled more weeds than I can calculate, and sewed, and sewed, and sewed some more. We also made trips around Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and the surrounding areas selling our goods. It was a marathon to say the least. With the economy in general being as slow as it is, it has felt like running a marathon in quicksand some days but still the daily comedies. On one particular trip we were headed for Virginia. We left with barely enough gas to get to our first stop (and none to get home on) when things ran amuck and we barely made enough money to get back home. We left again the next day with the same amount of gas and zero cash only to find our first sale of the day just 18 minutes before the bank closed in a town 15 miles away up a mountain on an empty tank of gas. Wouldn't you know, I took the wrong road. In spite of my error we made it just one minute before closing and the bank just happened to be right next door to a gas station. WHEW! It's the sort of dumb luck that defines our lives. Or maybe my mother is right, "God does take care of fools and little children."
Week 6 brought Memorial Day weekend. The tubes opened on the river Memorial Day weekend and they were top on my to do list when moving here.
The Smokey Mountains are breathtakingly beautiful and the rivers in the area are beyond compare. The water is clear, and cool, and crisp. Tubing seemed like an ideal escape from our chaotic, frenzied life. We checked in, got our tubes and life jackets, signed the paperwork freeing the company of any financial liability in the event of our untimely death, and a man in a green van picked us up and drove us a few miles up the mountain where he dumped us off on the side of the road by the river and then drove away. The first tubing day of summer and the water, formerly frozen snow from the mountain top, is frigid. We climbed awkwardly into our tubes and current swept us away on a lovely little ride.
I might ought to mention that I don't swim. I have a senseless streak of bravado about me and a complete and utter fear of water deeper than I am tall. I know this about myself but I didn't really take it into account where tubing is concerned. I believe in riding through fear. I didn't really count on hitting the rapids in a tube not made for white capping waters, slamming into a rock that launched me and my tube in a somersault over rocks, in swift moving water, deeper than me. There I was just ambling along in water with nearly no current, maybe an hour into our float, bottle of Diet Coke in one hand, tube of sunscreen in the other, my life jacket only halfway fastened, not hanging on. Just being utterly mindless for a short moment of a beautiful, sunny day when.......WHAM!....my tube went spinning spinning spinning in an uncontrollable current and then ZONK!....feet over head, bottom in air, PLUNGE...BOB......OH CRAP! I lost my glasses - everything is a blur. I see a figure of a person on shore and scream "HELP! I can't swim!!" and a chain of hands formed from shore toward me as I kept floating farther and farther away. Eventually (maybe seconds but it seemed much longer) they reached me. The man on the front of the chain said, "the same thing happened to all of us". His voice was shaking - his body was unsteady like I just realized mine was too. I had lost my tube down river and in a short while a little boy in yellow swim shorts came running along the shore with it for me. What a HERO!
Just as I was coming out of the water I saw a blur of a green swim suit across shore. Another tuber being rescued - my mother, Bonnie. She had been in the same current just behind me when I flipped. She said later that she saw the guys ahead of me flipping and she thought they were just messing around. Then she saw me flip and she knew there was trouble. I'm not a flipper where water is concerned. She passed me just as they were pulling me to shore and heard me scream that I had lost my glasses. In the chaos of it all she had tried to slow herself by steadying her foot on the rocks that flipped us as she floated over. That just served to launch her further and she was pummeled into the rocks beneath and then the current carried her to the opposite side of the river where she was stopped when she was body slammed into a fallen tree. Another chain of men rescued her to the side of the river that I was on - in a much heavier current.
We were both bleeding a bit but once we caught our breath we had a rush of the thrill of it all and got back in our tubes for the rest of the ride. Down river aways we took another spill along with more tubers. This time a 70-ish man in a kayak from a nearby campground had devoted his day to pulling tubers from the water. He explained that he had grown up on this river and that this year it was up about 18-inches from normal. First tubing day for the season and it was a much more aggressive run than anyone in a tube was expecting. That time we packed it in and found our way back to the road with some other tubers that had the same idea. Bonnie had a broken rib from slamming into the tree earlier. We later learned that she had also dislocated her shoulder. So we would have to sit it out for 6 or 7 weeks before we could go back. But darn it, it was just so much fun!! It really was! We can't wait to go back!
We, Bonnie and I, have worked together for so many years now that when one of us is incapacitated it's like losing a right hand. In the very best of circumstances it's tough. Well, Saturn (the taskmaster planet) has been plowing through both of our signs (Gemini and Taurus) for the past couple of years and we've been swapping limping around left handed for most of it. About two years ago I had two broken legs and one broken arm for six months. Poor Bonnie.
So here we are in this uphill battle of stabilizing ourselves and one of us now injured for 6 weeks. We wrapped up her ribs. She's done this before so I'm beginning to be an expert at wrapping broken ribs, put her shoulder in my old sling. Yes, I did actually, in the course of weeding out what we could and couldn't afford to ship from L.A.,ship all of the odds and ends of bandages, braces, & splints that we have collected. You just never know but one thing is for sure, when you need them and don't have them it's a damn hard time to pull a rabbit out of your hat. Patched up and propped up - I kicked into high gear and she didn't miss a beat. Weeks 7,8,9, and part of week 10 we sewed and sewed and sold our way through Eastern Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia but mostly Virginia. It was an agonizing few weeks on so many levels but we were still in the race.
Paying our rent on time had been our Achilles Heel this first couple of months. We arrived with deposit and first months rent paid before we arrived but we arrived about 3 weeks later than we had planned. This left us only 10 days to sell what we had brought to make enough money to buy equipment and supplies to re-produce what we had sold, to sell again to pay the next month's rent. Not surprisingly, we came in a few days late - well, about 10 days late. My landlord was less than amused. This left us in the same boat for the next months rent but with a few more days to our credit. By the third month, we did it! WHEW!.........what relief!
By the end of week 10 we were on track with our business, our bills, our move. Our feet finally hit the ground and we finally wrangled season passes to Dollywood and Dollywood's Splash Country. A theme/amusement park and a water park, both just across the parkway from our new home. We are in heaven! I call it the hill billy country club. We've been nearly every day! oh, I'm having such a hard time working. What a thing to have in your back yard. While I can't swim, my mother has an equal fear of heights so I was taken aback when she challenged me to riding Dare Devil Falls at Dollywood. I am a WIMP. Bonnie kept bugging me to go on it with her and I finally did. So we get in and are floating around the stream, past the bears mauling the campers in the tent, into the haunted cave with the bats, then up.......and up........and up.........and up.......and uuUP..... to the saw mill. Then it stops on top of the water fall. That's where Bonnie says, "oh (as in duh!) this isn't the ride I thought we were on." We're looking straight down an 85 foot drop at this point. I look at her and say, "well, it's a little late to do anything about that now."...............PLUNGE!!! Ding dong! Just makes ya want to ring her neck some days. It was FUN though! I'll do it again!
Also in week 10, on the 5th of July, our landlord knocked on the door with a realtor in tow. They're selling the house (duplex) we just leased. Long.......deep.....sigh.........hmpf!
Well, I've been sort of writing this as I go and we're in week 16 now. They've only show the house once and with just about every house around here on the market I guess I'm not overly concerned. Our most recent mission is a television & contact lenses since I still haven't replaced the glasses lost in the tubing spill Memorial Day weekend. Luckily I did manage to find an old pair packed away in a purse that made it through the move. Sadly, they were a pair of clunky wood frames I bought from a thrift store in West Hollywood more for fun than for function.
We've been without television and the news for over four months now and it's beginning to wear on my nerves a bit. Thankful for the wheels my dad donated but they didn't come with a working stereo so it feels a bit like we've fallen into a black abyss where current events are concerned. Then again, I guess it's kept us focused.
Underneath this gypsy life there is a solid sense of consciousness and practicality. We had been discussing this move for over a year. We had sworn we would never leave Los Angeles, we truly loved every minute of it but the tide had turned at it was just time to go. To the naysayers, true, we left a LOT behind. All of our neighbors apartments were overflowing with our cast off's of a life. Sewing machines, furniture, clothing, rooms full of yarns and fabrics not to mention food and every small and large appliance in my mother's gourmet kitchen. A library full of books, and more. We took from L.A. as much as we left behind and we tried to distribute all of that as best we could to those who could make the best use of it - we have no regrets at all. Our televisions were eight years old, it was time to replace them anyway. We traded our stainless appliances (also nearly eight years old) to our former landlord for the last couple of months rent. Most importantly, we made it with our paintings, our computers, the core of what makes our life function in tact.
I've been promising new knitting and crochet patterns and yes, they are still on the way! We haven't missed a beat at all. Our delay in launching the new designs is not so much now to do with our move as with something we've had in the works for some time now. We began the knitting patterns about three years ago. Last year we added crochet patterns to our line mainly because of overwhelming requests to do so. Later this year we are also adding over 100 new sewing patterns!! We're very excited about that! To be updated with our newest designs & also to enter to win our monthly free pattern drawing please click here
If you missed the first two parts of this story click here:
Part 1: Home Sweet Home
Part 2: A New Place to Call Home
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