Industrial Noir in the Red Earth: My Trip to Oklahoma

For a long time, I couldn't say that I ever had a home. I never stayed in one place more than a year, and even then my grasp on my own surroundings felt tentative - like at any moment everything around me would be taken from me. So I grew used to feeling uprooted, blown about. I never really bothered decorating, or buying knick-knacks, or trying to establish myself, because I felt there was no point, as I'd be moving soon anyway.

Only now do I understand how much it affected my psyche, feeling like I didn't have a home.

When I go to Oklahoma, though, I feel like I'm home.

It's the only place that I feel like has persisted throughout my whole life, that is a tangible link from my birth stretching out into the future. Sometimes I forget, and feel abandoned and stranded, until I arrive again. For nearly 50 years my grandparents were dairy farmers, and made cheese from their own milk, and only recently retired.

I can remember being a child in a crib in my grandparent's house, scared of the shadows that danced through the hallway. My heights are marked on the wall. They still haven't fixed the broken doorknob in my aunt's old room. Everyone in my family has stories of ghosts in the basement. I always helped milk cows when I came, my Grandpa taught me how to attach the milking machine to the udders, to herd the cows into their stalls, and to feed them grain from the lever system they built. We built forts out of twine, played in the mud, explored the scraps in a nearby junkyard, helped feed cattle, and learned to ride horses.

When I told Robert I wanted to drive to Oklahoma for Christmas, he told me he'd come with me. So we loaded up the puppies into my new Honda H-RV. I'm super lucky that my grandparents had come into some money and decided to buy me one brand new. I've never had someone give me such a wonderful gift and I'm still in awe that someone loves me enough to drop so much money on me.

Anyway, it's super roomy and can comfortably fit three doggoes. Last time Robert and I took a 20+ hour trip, they had to ride in the back of my PT Cruiser, and barely had enough room to sit down. Now they had plenty of room along with all our bags, Robert's computer, a bag full of snacks, the machetes, and the axe (Everyone needs a road axe.)

Before we headed out I also baked some delicious peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for my grandparents. I don't have any children, but I did let one of my dogs lick the spoon (sans chocolate.) Not shown were the 5 machetes that I also brought as gifts for everyone.

We stopped at the Grand Canyon on the way, because I'd never seen it. It's impossible to take a good photograph of, but you get vertigo looking down at it, like you're in a plane. It's so vast I feel my stomach drop just trying to reinvision it.

We spent Christmas Eve in a Hilton in Albuquerque. I checked GrubHub for any restaurants that'd be open, so I ended up getting kid's chicken tender meals for the puppies (Yes, I know, we're ridiculous), and some monte cristo sandwiches for Robert and I. Our first Christmas meal four years ago, we were too poor to buy anything so Robert ended up making us pancakes and eggs, and we ate on the floor of our apartment.

It was definitely a step up in terms of extravaganza - but I still felt the same amount of love when he smiled at me and told me 'Merry Christmas.'

Overall, it took us about 22 hours to go from San Diego to Kingfisher, Oklahoma. We arrived on my grandparent's farm the next evening, and I briefly got to visit with my Dad and Aunt. My grandma heated up a casserole and made us coffee and Robert and I ate blissfully.

"Everything tastes better in the country," he said, and it's true.

It was around 20 degrees the whole time we were there. We walked outside in the cold with the dogs and walked around in the red hills and the pasture outside.

My aunt got me a knit bear hat for Christmas. It definitely came in handy in the freezing weather.

Later when I got drunk on Four Loko while I played Life is Strange in the living room, I went outside in the cold while Robert was smoking. I snuggled close to him and told him that it was so strange that he was there.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"It's like I kept these two worlds in different parts of my head. Now they're intersecting - you, and my childhood. The categories are melting into each other."
"I see."
"A decade ago after I got arrested, my parents sent me here to get rid of me for a while. And I remembered sitting at that same desk you were just sitting at, writing a story on the computer. And I remembered how hopeless I felt, and how normal that seemed. I was frozen for there in eternity and I knew I'd never escape. If someone told me it was possible to feel the way I do now, I wouldn't have believed it. But everything can change. In an instant, forever, in ways you never would have been able to understand."
I cleared my throat, buried further into his jacket to get away from the cold.
"I mean, sorry, I'm drunk."
"It's okay, baby," he said. "I understand."