Poem By Martiel Hay 07/2012

I am getting ready to move again, with my family. We are going to move back to where we both grew up, in California. Currently living in Omaha, NE and it has been a quick 7 months here. This will be the shortest time frame of living somewhere. It was really hard to comprehend the feeling of temporary and moving up here to Nebraska, knowing that we were not planning on staying here for too long. We lived the past 6 years in St. Louis, MO and owned a house, and didn't think we were even moving till a few months before hand. It was all based on a job opportunity with my husbands work.

We wanted to make this move to Omaha for a promotion in becoming a manager, only it would be temporary to fill in the spot of Manager for a time frame of 2-5 years. We knew this was a good move and knew it was not permanent, and eventually we would move again to a place (in one of the 50 states) to then stay and raise our daughter in. Little did we know, the crazy time we would have in readjusting to a new area and starting all over again, with no one to know in the area, and not knowing the way to anywhere. Trying to drive around town, we relied allot on our Google Maps app with our phones. The Summer of 2012 was so up in the air, with mixed emotions and also having to sell our house in St. Louis, and downsizing into a smaller rental, becoming renters vs. owners...not knowing how long we were going to live in Omaha.

We were both going bonkers with the unknown. Our future was so unplanned and so up in the air. I hated the frustrations, that moving to an unfamiliar place gave me. I was upset so often, not knowing how to find a simple store, or find a park to play in, and to remember the area. I made so many U-turns while driving places and back tracking all the time. My preschooler in the back seat of the car was even catching on that we were lost at times. One day, after making another U-turn she says, "Oh-man!" I ask her, "what's wrong?" She then tells me, "We are lost!"

It made me smile, but made me realize that she is so observant and I need to be careful with how I feel about Omaha and try not to complain or show frustrations with her around. She was catching on...

So one day I was at Starbucks sitting in the cafe, and often I like to jot down poems that I write on scratch paper as I sit there. Here is a scratch paper poem I wrote (over the summer, when I was still new to the Omaha area) and forgot about this poem til I came across it today.

This poem, I wrote, is about my many times of getting lost: driving in the unknown, new area, trying to navigate and find a Target Store on L Street. In the end I found a different Target store located on another street and just settled for that location.

L STREET
    BY: MARTIEL HAY 07/2012

New State
New Town
New Streets to become my back roads
My destination from here to there
I found the L street
Camouflaged with three other streets
Each one meets in the West Center
A tangle of streets
My GPS was at its best
found a neighbor L
but not the L for me.
It wasn't meant to be
we shall see.
Give me the run around
Let's try another go around

L is for Long at last
I have found you.
My new state
My new town
My new street