Virginia Lover in Bear Country

Almost 20 years ago I left Virginia for Southern California with my Navy husband and a U-Haul filled with ideals. Almost as soon as we landed PTSD took both my husband and me over like triple overehead waves that most surfers dream of. As a former surfer and Navy granddaughter/ daughter I thought I could, alone, handle just about any size wave. What I misjudged was the power of culture shock. September 11, 2001 was received in vastly different ways in California than it was in Virginia Beach. The conspiracy theories forever changed my perceptions and I found myself on walkabout that brings me to writing for Patch a second time in this lifetime. The picture that accompanies this article is a silhouette of me in a trailer that is next to the trailer where I currently reside. Both were gifts to veterans from a combination of the VA and local nonprofits. The irony is not lost on me that I end up on back-to-back couches at age 51 after leaving my Navy husband for what I thought would be greener pastures.

The first pasture consisted of a job working at a local health food store because my ideals about starting a massage practice in a flooded market were reduced to $9.50/ hour. A coworker who'd recently ended a relationship exclaimed, "Hippie, you belong up north," therefore the second involved "following my bliss" to Humboldt State University where initially I enrolled in courses designed to further my healthcare education. Immersed in redwood rainforest, I fell for the romance of an Environmental Ethics course at College of the Redwoods taught by a man named Bill Harger. Harger claimed that tossing trash out a car window was more honest than recycling.Harger also claimed to have invented the magnetic strip on the back of all our credit cards; the patent was purchased from Harger and cohorts by IBM for $25 and Harger became a poet and community college professor instead of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Our challenge for the semester was to develop an environmental ethic to trump Harger's "cause no unnecessary harm". In hindsight, Harger's drinking habit, sense of humor, and ethic mirror the regret of scientists such as Oppenheimer. Hindsight and ideals make quite the trinity, do they not? A friend once made a shirt for me that read "The Grass is GREEN".

The friend who made me that shirt married the friend who came to visit my Navy husband and me in 2003. Wait. I married them both. In Bali in 2009. How did I get from Northern California to Bali? I followed my bliss prompted by that same friend who came to visit. Melinda and I met at The 9:30 club on March 17th, 2001 before 9/11 took hold of our culture. Melinda and I were there to see Karl Denson's Tiny Universe and after the show my friend asked me to invite the band back to this rooftop party in DC. The unmarried ones were more than happy to oblige, and Brian Jordan the guitarist hopped in a cab with me after the show. Brian and I are still friends; the reason I am writing this article is per Brian's urging that I write about my acid trip of a life. Melinda and I became close friends for many years after that night. At the time, Melinda worked for The Institute for Justice and I was helping move my high school friend out of her secret marriage to a much younger Navy SEAL (who had chosen a younger German woman while deployed) into the care of my own family. My brief sojourn in Northern Virginia netted many connections, to include a voracious attachment to live music that brought me back to Virginia Beach where I met the husband who is now married to the "other woman" also met on deployment. Melinda left IJ to teach in Japan while I played Navy housewife unsuccessfully. The grass is GREEN, but there isn't much grass in Santa Barbara. Hence the move to Northern California.

Grass is not something I smoked at the time of my move, and I had no idea that it was the cash crop in my new home until someone mentioned that's the good stuff "we" smoked in high school (puns intended). Another U-Haul brought me from Santa Barbara to Humboldt, where "U-Haul lesbians" are in abundance. If that's a new expression to you, it was to me in 2003. Remember my friend who called me a hippie? Dr. Michelle Cartier is now a professor of film studies at Humboldt State, and Cartier was the first to whistle at me in the aisle of the health food store. Neither Cartier nor I smoked. We spent a fair amount of time at The Shanty and various bars near HSU while I took full advantage of being listed as "wife" on the video store account. Cartier introduced me to a barrage of foreign and independent films and The L Word, which I binged long before Netflix was a chill zone. Basically, my film "husband" taught me to read subtitles and to think multidimensionally regarding race, ethnicity, gender, sex, and love. Those things taught me to be happy with the metaphorical grass on my own lawn while I pursued an undergraduate education.

I had no idea when I moved to California that I would be on my own. Still. A bachelor's and a graduate degree later. Questioning the color of the grass.