When I moved to Chicago, and found myself stuffed onto very peopled trains, wedged between tall buildings, and lamenting the lack of trees, I thought to myself, “I am not a city person.” But Chicago grew on me. I became a professional at riding the train, enjoyed exploring the insides of those giant buildings, and found out where the trees were. I became a Chicagoan.

It is my fourth day in Georgia. Cumming, GA. A town considered part of the “Atlanta Metropolitan area.” And I suppose it is. I was able to listen to Atlanta’s NPR station yesterday on the radio. I turned it on just as “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” was ending. I missed it. I missed one of my favorite NPR shows. Fitting, as it is taped in Chicago and I’ve seen it live multiple times. And now, In Georgia, I was unable to catch it.

Looks like the back end of a trailer, but it's Georgia.
Looks like the back end of a trailer, but it’s Georgia.

When we drive here, we follow the GPS wherever we need to go. I try to follow the signs, but there are less signs here than there are in the city. And the signs are simple and sparse—just little black and white state route signs with a number (numbers that don’t yet mean anything to me) inside the shape of Georgia. Last night, as we drove past cows and horses (because we live so far out), I started crying. I started crying because I miss my friends in Chicago. And I’m passing cows. COWS. And now that we’re here and I have to pass cows and horses and hay bales and peach stands to even get to the road that’s going to take me into the closest major city, I’m scared. I’m scared I’m not going to like it or that I’m too isolated or that I’m not going to get to perform/teach/direct/insert-artistic-desires-here as much I’d like to.

And it’s only the fourth day. Yes, I’m aware that it’s going to take a while to find my groove. I’ll meet lovely people. I’ll do lovely things. But what if…. What if there are too many cows in the way? And when will I learn to read the signs?

But then, on the drive back to our new home in our new state last night, something completely stunning and unexpected happened. We saw a shooting star. The thing about being way outside of the city, next to the cows and the horses and hay bales and the peach stands is that you can see the stars. So many stars. I forgot how many starts there are—bright and twinkling and splendid. Right in our driveway, you can see the stars. And tonight when we were driving home, we both saw it, my new husband and I, we saw a shooting star and it was beautiful.

So maybe it’s a sign. But because we’re not in the city, we don’t have all of those signs in our faces anymore. Now, when you take away all the signs, you see all that’s really there—cows and horses and trees and shooting stars.

1 Comment

  • Merrie says:

    I love that in the sentence about forgetting how man stars there are “—bright and twinkling and splendid” – it autocorrected “stars” to “starts.”

    Maybe that’s another sign.

    Xo