acceptance | You Are Here

I was a recent divorcee, and we were traveling to meet the family of the man with whom I was “the other woman.” Everyone had been gracious from afar, but I knew that his mom had been on the other side of infidelity and I worried that grace might be a little frosty in person. Perhaps there was forgiveness for the son, but not for the home wrecker girlfriend.

In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I kept pestering Rich, asking what we could take to dinner. I was nervous about making a good impression. I knew that his mom was accomplished in the kitchen, while I was coming from a season of limited cooking. In my first marriage, I had all but given up preparing home-cooked meals, relying instead on prepackaged food to feed my family. With Rich’s encouragement, I was beginning to stretch my culinary wings a bit, but preparing anything for his mom, my eventual mother-in-law, felt like a test that I was destined to fail.

We finally decided that we would take bread and salad. We made two loaves of bread, made some compound butters, and bought the ingredients for a Caprese salad with a balsamic reduction. I knew it wasn’t enough. In light of a turkey and mashed potatoes and homemade cheesecake, what were a couple loaves of bread and some mozzarella, tomato, and basil leaves? It wouldn’t be enough.

I wouldn’t be enough.

The truth was, I wanted to take something that might cover my inadequacies as a cook, but also as a potential wife, as a mother. Something to prove that I was more than an adulteress. It was my first major holiday apart from my children, the first Thanksgiving in years that I wasn’t spending with my parents, and I longed to be accepted as a part of this family—to have a place in this home during a season when I felt displaced in so many areas.

As mealtime approached, my nerves increased. Rich’s brother and sister-in-law had welcomed me to their brand-new home warmly, even if the heater wasn’t working properly. But I was still waiting to meet the woman who had given birth to the man whose hand I was currently clutching. Our meager offerings to the Thanksgiving feast looked as small as I felt.

We heard the Jeep pull up the driveway and I could feel my heartbeat quicken. We should take the bread and go. Go before she had a chance to look at me and disapprove.

She came through the door, and her sons went to give her a hug. I stayed back to give them an opportunity to say hello, then she made her way over to me.

And she embraced me.

The rest of the day, we sat in the kitchen, cutting up potatoes together, tasting the balsamic reduction that Rich made, laughing, telling stories. I had a piece of her cheesecake, she had a piece of our bread.

Everything was delicious. Everything was enough.

* * * * *

“Enough” was written by Alise Chaffins. Alise is a wife, a mother, an eater of soup, and a lover of Oxford commas. You can generally find her sitting behind a keyboard of some kind: playing or teaching the piano, writing at her laptop, or texting her friends a random movie quote. She lives in West Virginia and blogs at knittingsoul.com

I can drive, with moderate success, in most major American cities.

The D.C. beltway? No problem. I even go the right direction, most of the time. Los Angeles to Ventura on the 101? Done it with (extra points!) a puking child in the backseat. Chicago? Boston? Philadelphia? Check, check, check, though I always wonder why the Philly drivers are so mean.

However.

There is one city, one very small city, in which I consistently drive the wrong way down one-way streets, miss stop signs, and drive slower than the speed limit, trying to find my way. And that would be:

Butler, Pennsylvania. Population 13.757.

My hometown.

I noticed this strange phenomenon a few years ago. One day, after driving the wrong way on a street near my former elementary school, I pulled over, berating myself and thanking God that no one had been coming the other way. How could I be so lost in a place that was so familiar? And that’s when I realized my problem.

I knew how to walk these streets, not drive them.

You see, I was one of those people who wanted one thing from adulthood: to get out of my hometown . It was too small. Too ingrown. Too boring. And so, as soon as I could, I left. In my small gold Nissan I began racking up the miles. College was a three hour drive. North Carolina, where I worked one summer, was nine hours. I did not drive to Northern England, but I lived there for a year, wearing out my EuroRail pass along with my big green backpack.

After college I surprised myself by returning to Western Pennsylvania, but it was Pittsburgh, not Butler, where I found my first job and my first post-college apartment. Pittsburgh is only an hour drive from Butler, but it seems much further. There are ethnic restaurants other than the americanized chinese buffet, people who aren’t white, and community events that don’t involve gun raffles or high school sports teams.

I’ve been in Pittsburgh for fifteen years now, and it can be easy to roll my eyes at my hometown.

But that wouldn’t be fair.

That day in the car, when I realized that I knew how to walk but not drive in my hometown, I also realized that I have never lived as a grown-up in Butler, Pennsylvania. Could it be that my experience there seems limited because I was, um, ten? Could it be that I still feel ambivalent and awkward because my culminating experience was in high school? These were not my easiest years.

And what is beginning to open up in me is not a desire to return to my hometown (no, I like my Indian food too much), but a sense of grace and openness to a place that was once too familiar. I can take my kids to the Butler Farm Show. I can enjoy local marching bands at the Christmas parade, send my husband to hunting camp, and read the local newspaper without mocking it (much).

Because when it comes down to it, I just don’t have as much to prove as when I was fifteen.

And I don’t use nearly as much hairspray either.

You Are Here

True stories about roots, identity, and place.

Tag Archives: acceptance

Enough

Where I Came From: Lost in a Small Town