Cochran, Georgia--my hometown

Since no one in my family lives in Cochran anymore, I haven't been there in over a decade--and then only to pass through with my parents and then-boyfriend, Bob, and show it to him.  Betty and I grew up there together, and we were best friends in kindergarten and in all the grades after that, then I moved away junior year to Lawrenceville.

On Sunday, Betty reminded me of a line from Cheryl Strayed's Wild:

When Cheryl's mother learned that she was going to die, she said to her daughter, "I never got to be in the driver’s seat of my own life, I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I’ve always been someone’s daughter or mother or wife. I’ve never just been me.”

We must be about the same age as Cheryl Strayed's mother.

Betty and I were Our Own Selves until we married in our teens, then the trajectories of our lives changed.  The men in Cochran were always in the drivers' seats--and most families had only one car.  Sometimes we played grownups sitting in our parents' parked cars after we watched "The Secret Storm" and "As the World Turns." Sometimes we spent the day wandering around town, going to the pool, riding bicycles, always talking.

As a single woman for the first time in my late-forties, I wanted to be in the driver's seat--literally.  I had the first car of my own, a 1990 Acura Integra, turquoise.  Betty and I drove to Cape Cod in 1995, the year I went to Broad Loaf Writer's Conference, then she flew home to Peachtree City.

I remember the euphoria I felt behind the wheel of my own car then, and that feeling continues in every car, on every trip.

Betty and I listened to the Toni Morrison graduation address and wondered how our adult lives might have been different had Cochran provided us with a more challenging education, more provocative questions--such as the ones Morrison poses for the graduates of Wellesley.  We wondered what options might have presented themselves had we had an adult single life for a while.

We both remember Cochran in all its many facets--a boring little town in which we had plenty of freedom to wander, in which we knew almost everyone and everyone knew us and our parents, and in which we had the wonderful Miss Marguerite Smith for our piano teacher. We were best friends whose quirks and interests fit each other's like two  puzzle pieces.

Our schools were not inspiring, but we found books and we were both voracious readers.  We had secrets that we never had the words for, didn't even share with each other until years later.

It was just a couple of years ago that we realized that we'd both married and  moved away without even ten dollars of our own.  Every girl we knew probably did the same, as did our mothers when they were girls. When a girl married, her husband was supposed to take care of her in every way, and we didn't imagine any other pattern but this. (My mother did have her own car when she married in '45).

For a while after my divorce,  I continued the habit of buying what my ex-husband liked--a certain brand of soap (Ivory only), a certain flavor of jelly,  etc.  What a thrill it was to realize one day that I could get out of that box and buy what I liked!

Cochran, like all hometown, is like the broth and seasonings in which we marinate ourselves.  Cochran had its plusses and minuses, and I'm glad I have Betty with whom to remember both!