Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blessed: The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.   – Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

We moved to Texas the day after we were married in Iowa. It was early May. My husband had already been in Houston for three months. He had one day of vacation to get married and we needed to fly back right away. We were broke graduate students and a job was more important than a honeymoon or locale or quality of life. We did not plan on staying in Texas. We had picked out Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana as our top three “after we are married” places to live. Numbers four and five were Minnesota and Michigan. We both liked snow, and winter, and wearing sweatshirts. “Give it two years”, said my brand new husband, swapping his flannel shirt for a white cotton one as we headed for Houston and a future in Corporate America.

I was close minded about Texas in a big way. Texas was a place with floods and hurricanes and oil barons, and industry. It had stolen jobs and people from my beloved and rust belted Detroit. It was greedy and evil and sprawling, and the antithesis of me. I had watched the movie “Local Hero” and did not like the traffic jam in the opening scene. I loved my husband, but this was a true test of just how much. In spite of all this, I also wanted a job, and I would have to park my pride and pre-judgment about the land of plenty somewhere south of Oklahoma. The job prospects in Houston would be better than anywhere else we could land.

We flew from Cedar Rapids, to the Quad Cities, to Chicago, to Houston. The first thing I learned to love about Houston was its two massive airports. You could go anywhere in the world and people did. Within a week my husband would be flying to New Orleans while I unpacked our wedding gifts, books, and boxes full of rock samples. The next year my husband would be flying over to London and France and I would be joining him after saving a week of precious vacation and comp time by working weekends. We planned a trip to Alaska once we had enough vacation. Until then it would be 18 months of heat, humidity and traffic jams.

Houston had been hit hard by the recession. People teased us, ” you know what they call a geologist in Houston?” “Waiter!” or “Taxi!”. The truth was, things were just starting to pick back up and we had landed in Houston just in time for the next big wave. Two years, I told myself as I stripped down to shorts and a t-shirt and turned up the AC. Two more years.

The moving van with our combined stuff from Iowa arrived. Then another arrived with some furniture my parents had sent down. I unloaded and unpacked while my husband left for his job down the street. We had one car. It was a gold Ford Torino, badly rusted, with snow tires and a faux black leather roof. It had “I’m from the rust belt” written all over it. His grandfather’s car, my husband had lovingly taken good care of it. They had nicknamed her Goldilocks. If I needed Goldilocks, I would drive my husband to work. Often, the police would follow me home, Goldilocks was as out of place in Houston as I was.

If I just needed to go to the grocery store, I would ride my bike. I learned that riding a bike in Houston means you will either get run over or die a slow dehydration death from sweating too much. I learned quickly to weave my way via the back streets, through pretty neighborhoods with single story brick houses, the live oaks and pecan trees providing shade.

I finished my final thesis and printed it out on a hot and humid summer day. I was crabby and could not get the hanging sentences from the last paragraph to print over to the next page per the strict guidelines of the nameless and faceless Thesis Office. I had completed my defense and first deposit before the wedding, but this last part was frustrating and I had no energy for my old life. I had a new husband and new temporary job, and a new rental house and was living in a new city. I finished the work and received my M.S. degree later that year, but not before throwing a stack of papers at my surprised new husband and shouting loud enough that the terns flying in the Gulf of Mexico were rerouted for a day. I hated senseless bureaucracy more than I hated heat and humidity. But I had finished and closed the Iowa chapter with minimal debt and a degree. I liked being married, but I hated being dependent on others for my livelihood.

I had given up my maiden name. It was hard, giving up my independence, and I left it on my thesis just in case I needed proof that I had a life before this one. I had given up my dream of living somewhere with snow and four seasons. From the looks of things, Houston just had two seasons, both requiring AC. One was summer, and it was miserable. The other season in Houston seemed to be Spring. Spring in Houston made up for all the bad air summer had brought in. Spring in Texas, it turned out, was delightful.

Spring starts in Texas around January. In some years, February can surprise you with a cold snap that pretends to be winter, but just one trip to Michigan for comparison will clear up that confusion. Springtime in Texas goes from February until just about Memorial Day.

It is a long, slow dance, at a 1/2 degree a day from the mid 60’s in February, to the 70’s in March, to the 80’s in April, to the 90’s in May. In the fall, the same long dance happens, 90’s in September to the 80’s in October and the 70’s in November. In December it might dip below 50, and there could be a day or two in December or January when you see white fluffy stuff falling from the sky that is not hail or a low cloud, but actually snow. The city shuts down. Most northerners find this much sunshine quite appealing. I had spent too much of my youth up north and was terribly homesick for a cold bitter, and stinging wind. This much sun was nice but not normal.

The snow and cold may last for a day or a week or even two. Then it warms up and the crocuses pop up, then the red bud appear, light purple and delicate, the opening act, with just a hint of spring. The apple trees follow. Spring. Mother Nature snaps her fingers and Texas wildflowers and azaleas enter stage right, and flowering cactii enter stage left, and the whole show lasts for months. You open the windows and spend the days outside, so excited that everything does well in the garden. The grass grows so fast you need armies of landscape crews just to keep the greenery at bay.

A drive to the Hill country rewards you with carpets of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. When those disappear you will see there is even more: Indian blanket, daisies, sunflowers, mountain pink, and wild rose. People write songs about Texas and now you understand why. There is just so much to say about Spring time here. Galveston beckons too and we head there next, light cool breezes accompany us. We fly kites and make sand castles.

Then summer hits. Like a ton of bricks you can’t breathe and the air is heavy and smells toxic. Ozone levels are dangerously high and the weatherman uses words like “oppressive”. Inside everyone is freezing and working their tails off, trying to make enough money to pay their AC bills. One more year, and ten months, I think. “Ugh”, I say out loud, every year, around July 15, here it comes.

My office mate would fly in from Colorado every week just to have a job. When I complained about Houston he’d say, well “You can’t eat scenery and Houston pays the bills”. He was right, I liked having a steady paycheck and apparently so did 5 million of my best friends who shared the road with me each day. I adapted. I had found a good job. We turned a corner and it was the next year. We had two jobs. We were saving money and paying off my student loan and buying furniture and before we knew it, there was Spring, all light and lovely and teasing us while the wind howled on our old stomping grounds up north.

We went to Sea World and saw people with kids. Lets have some kids, so we can take them to Sea World I suggested, looking at the happy families. So then it was summer, summer, summer, hot and oppressive again. By the next Spring, which started on a beautiful sunny day in February, our daughter had arrived and we had a brand new house, with new furniture and all sorts of beautiful trees and birds in the garden. It was Spring in Texas once again. Two years had passed just like that.

Two years later, our son would be born, in early summer. He spent the first part of his life with no shirt. Most of his birthday photos and birthday parties were at pools, at places like SplashTown, or at a lake. The only birthday photo where he has on a shirt is the one where we went to Colorado for his birthday and it was still snowing in the mountains. A summer Texan. I had given birth to Two Texans, and here they were, two more years down the road, wearing flip flops and happily playing in the yard. Maybe Texas isn’t so bad after all, I thought, as I sipped my lemonade. “Let’s take the kids to Sea World”, I said

Ten years into this two season cycle, I turned to my husband one hot August day and asked “Has it been more than two years?” His smug reply, “Yes and its been a honeymoon the whole time, hasn’t it?”. “Ugh – let’s move to Alaska next summer”, I say.

The heat and humidity notwithstanding. Texas has its good points. For one thing, if you are raising small children it’s easier to get them dressed. There are no hats, boots, mittens, jackets needed, except for the rare trips up north. Socks are not needed in the summer. Most everyone has a pool or easy access to one. You can count on the weather being nice in the spring, and most days, the sun is shining. The kids all participate in summer league swimming, and the boys get crew cuts that last 6 months. The only real negative is around August-September. that’s when the temperatures and air and moisture combine with back-to-school traffic jams. The pools close because the life guards go back to school. Its football season and the kids are sweating before they even get their helmets on. Everyone is crabby and everything gets very oppressive. As if on cue, there is usually a hurricane or a tropical storm looming. Your head and sinuses rebel at the thought of it. “Ugh”, I think.

On the bright side, all that humidity is good for the complexion, and there is no such thing as “hat hair”. But there is “humidity hair”. You don’t need a shovel to get out of your driveway, but you might need to carry a pair of chest waders in the trunk. Floods and heat are realities. I may never call Texas “home” the way I think of Michigan as home. However, once I had little Texans, and I raised them here, my love of Texas increased at least two fold.

Texas is a very colorful and diverse place. We have met people from all around the world here. We have traveled to other places in the world. These are opportunities we only had here. We have now lived here almost thirty years. Its been way more than two years, I remind my husband. I am still homesick for snow and cold at times, and I still hate the traffic, but I have found places to ride my bike year round, to sail, and to swim, and to soak in the ever-present sunshine. When we get off the plane it feels like home.

Best of all, Spring in Texas brings acres and acres of wildflowers, and beautiful warm days with cool nights. Hope springs eternal. Springtime in Texas is long and not fleeting. It is reliable like the job market and as bright and colorful as Sea World. It brings in Gulf breezes that are light and gentle, and hopeful, carrying us along, on the wings of terns and new possibilities.

(🌻 lwr 10/23/2017)