Welcome to my world on the internet.
I'm a middle-aged single woman who lived most of my life in Texas, and, well...once a Texas Girl....always a Texas Girl. I was born in the panhandle town of Pampa. An oil boom town, Pampa really wasn't all that bad a place to be from - if you don't mind wind and extremes of weather. And very few trees. Maybe I'll write about growing up in Pampa sometime. It did have its good points, now that I can look at it with a clearer, more experienced eye. The summer before my sophomore year in high school, we moved to Texarkana (TX) where I lived until I married and began following my sailor husband from base to base. The best of those years were spent in Jacksonville, Florida, where I would have happily stayed. He, on the other hand, could think of no better place than Texas. So...Texas it was. We settled in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and it was there that I remained for the next 30 years or so.
In 2000, my employer, a national nonprofit focusing on disability issues, decided to move to the Washington, DC area, so I spent about five years as a "Yankee." East coast life has its charms, but when the company decided they had grown tired of me, I looked elsewhere for the next phase of my life. My daughter had left Texas by that time, and the only relatives still living in the state were in Houston and Pampa...neither of which sounded good to me. Texas was not looking like "the place to be." Since my daughter was going through some life-changing events about the same time, we both decided to move to the Memphis area, so we could be close to family living nearby.
I've found a new life here in the Memphis suburbs. I'm doing something entirely different - middle-management at a performing arts venue. It's disconcerting being in a situation where I know next to nothing. But, I'm smart and flexible, and I'm slowly becoming adjusted to this new world.
We have found that no matter where we go...no matter what we do....we are always described as being "from Texas." I suspect that label will follow us the rest of our days. I don't mind a bit. I will forever be a Texas Girl, no matter where I am.
If you want to stay for supper, we're having chicken fried steak. Oh...and you might as well take your shoes off. Everybody else does.
Suzette - AKA The Girl From Texas