The Life of M

There’s something about going home that is different from going any other place, in Texas or otherwise. Things move at a different pace and the focus is different; in College Station it’s a very young town with everything centering around the university, whether you’re a student or not. Coming home makes me feel like a better writer and reminds me of all of the things I want for myself and all of the things that I don’t.

There’s always a connection. When people tell stories, if they can’t make a personal connection, then there’s no point. “Oh, you know them. They had a daughter that was two years older than you at school. They’re related to that person that lives down the street. Her mother was a so-and-so. You’d know them if you saw them.” Sometimes it makes me feel claustrophobic, like I’m only two degrees away from my mother finding out what I was really doing on Friday night. Sometimes its comforting, like I’m wrapped up in a big spiderweb of bloodlines that can always lead me back to the familiar. 

The backyard is the heart of my house. If just being in Victoria fills me with the longing to write, the backyard is where I go when I need to put that nostalgia and impulses into words. There’s always a breeze in my backyard: it’s like the never-ending wind tunnel of creativity, blowing ideas and thoughts past me at just a leisurely enough pace for me to reach and catch one. 

My grandparents lived in this house forty years before we did. It’s one of those old, spread-out types with only two bathrooms and wood paneling in the den. There’s no fence around the backyard and when we were little we would walk with my grandfather out into the giant field behind their house and pick buttercups. For every Thibodeaux family event—Easters, Thanksgivings, graduation parties, that one time after Uncle Owen’s funeral—that we’ve ever held at our house, we always land up outside, even at Christmas. There were the times in high school when I would sneak out past my parents watching TV in the living room just to come sit out on the wood-chopping stump on the back porch and listen to the pecan, oak, and pine trees moving and making night-noises. 

Everything about who I am and the way I write comes back to this place. I used to feel like I was bursting out of my skin to get out of here, fighting with my parents and the structure of this small town way of life, but now I can’t soak up enough of it because I’m afraid the next time I come back it will all be gone.